Baking has always been a challenge for me. It all began in my formative years: I received an Easy-Bake Oven one Christmas and decided to make cookies in it. I followed the recipe (as closely as an 8 year old can). Slid the pan in the oven and set the timer. 5 minutes later the house filled with smoke. I had forgotten to take the plastic spatula out of the oven after sliding the pan in. To make matters worse, the plastic melted shut the oven door. I was forced to pull the plug and my very first batch of cookies were never to be realized.

By now you’ve probably noticed that there is no picture to wow you at the top of this post. There’s a reason for that and it has something to do with this recipe turning into a Kitchen Disaster – in which case it will soon appear on that page as well. The cookies tasted delicious, but were definitely lacking in the presentation department. At the end of this post is my analysis of what I believe is the reason for why the cookies turned out how they did.

Nothing melted or caught fire during baking, but these cookies were still quite challenging. Read on to see what happened!

Ingredients

• 2 1/4 cup All-Purpose Flour
• 2/3 cup Sugar
• 2 sticks unsalted Butter
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 2 tsp Vanilla Extract
• Your favorite jam

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl combine Sugar, Butter, Salt, and Vanilla. When that becomes smooth, sift in the flour in batches. You’ll eventually need to use a rubber spatula to mix. Cover and chill in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Roll the chilled dough into 1″ balls. Place on the baking sheet and using your thumb press down into the center. Spoon a little of your favorite jam into the depression. I put blueberry jam on the top row followed by strawberry and then blackberry. Bake for 18-20 minutes.

Why this happened:

1. I left the dough to chill for 5 hrs. and I believe it dried out. Rolling them into a ball was difficult since the dough was so crumbly.

2. The top (blueberry) row came out pretty well. The blueberry jam I used was a pricey preserve and very thick. The strawberry (a homemade jam that was a gift) was less thick and the blackberry was the smoothest (it being a Smucker’s jam). You can see that theses two liquefied in the heat and spread out of the wells.