For as long as I can remember, there has never been a recipe that I have followed without making some sort of 'improvement' in it. Either the spices were changed, flour was used instead of cake flour,or if one onion was good then two would be terrific!
When I was in my twenties I didn't own any recipe books. But one afternoon I had the desire to make some home-made cookies from scratch so I chose sugar cookies because they 're simple to make, and they don't require a lot of different ingredients. I assumed that flour, margarine,sugar, salt, two eggs, some milk, a little vanilla extract, and baking powder or soda would be all that was needed to create my very first culinary masterpiece.
Now remember; the pioneer women did not go to the store and buy recipe books, and they did not measure things out with measuring spoons and cups. Their methods were 'a pinch of this, and a handful of that' which just seemed to prove that baking cookies couldn't be all THAT hard.
I estimated that if the flour came up to the half-way mark on a large bowl, the amount would be sufficient for my purposes.
Two sticks of margarine seemed about right.
I didn't have as much milk as previously thought so adding water to make up the difference seemed like a no-brainer.
Sugar was kind of hard to gauge because I didn't want to use my hands for this sticky 'handful of that' measurement...So I just poured right out of the bag into the bowl until it looked like a reasonable amount. Plus I LIKED sugar. That's why I was making cookies to begin with!
Three eggs instead of two went into the mixture because everyone knows that egg is a 'binder', and I wanted to make sure that the cookies would hold their shape and not just ooze all over the baking pan.
Salt was shaken liberally over the entire mixture...if you can 'salt and pepper' frying eggs, then you can certainly salt cookie dough.
Speaking of dough, the mixture was starting to look more like cake batter but this wasn't a problem because a little more flour added to it would stiffen the dough right back up.
Four capfuls of vanilla extract still didn't produce the strong aroma I desired so four more went in, and the vanilla smell was SO much better, now.
In the cupboard was a can of baking soda. Now what's the difference between baking soda and baking powder? I didn't know, but the can said 'baking' on it so I took it down and put a handful of this powder into my creation. After all, nobody wants 'flat as a pancake' cookies!
Okay...done. No, wait. I didn't want to go through all this work just to end up with your run-of-the-mill sugar cookie so I looked around and found some cinnamon, some nutmeg, a single-serving box of raisins, and a partial bag of shredded coconut...yup, they all went in!
After rolling and placing my little balls of sugary delight into the baking pan and then flattening them down with a finger because they were so stiff...
Finally it was time to pop everything into the oven. So I carefully placed the baking pan on the upper rack and turned the oven on to 350 degrees...the universal temperature for just about everything!
As the oven heated up, you could smell the most delicious aroma wafting throughout the entire apartment. Everything smelled so good that I could hardly wait to sample the finished product!
After a half hour, it was time to pull those sweet little gems out!
While removing the cookies from the oven, I noted that their shape really hadn't changed much except for a few cracks in the surface of each one. But, oh, how good they smelled!
After waiting just a few minutes for them to cool down, I finally gave in to the urge and picked up one of these little brown balls...bit into it...and felt my whole mouth fill with the taste of...SALT AND EXTREME BITTERNESS! Not to mention that baby powder would have contained more moisture!
Quickly, I grabbed a paper towel, spit the chewed cookie into it, and then raced to the bathroom for the mouthwash!
How could anything that smelled so good taste so bad?
Sadly, I took the batch of cookies and tossed them outside to the birds. Birds, at least, will eat anything.
A week later, the cookies were still there!
