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Story Time

Instead of sharing with you a sweet story about the time I found a deep love for party planning and cooking, I’d rather entertain you with a story from the first time I made a complete fool of myself in a rather unfortunate baking disaster. I am at the point where I look back at this story and just laugh my a*$ off. Please don’t feel like you have to hold back your own laughter. I actually encourage it lol.

It went a little something like this – Middle schooler vs. homemade cookies, unsupervised.

I was in 6th grade. I was at the point where I wanted to start doing things myself. No help. No guidance. No extra hands. I happened to really want some double chocolate chip cookies one day and thought my family would appreciate some fresh baked cookies from scratch too. Only thing was, I had never made anything from scratch or even from a box by myself. And yet I was determined to do it. I was prepared for this. I printed out a recipe I found online, made sure I had all of the ingredients ready and set everything out, including equipment, and felt ready to make these cookies. I had it all figured out.

Or so I thought. Reading a recipe is fairly straightforward but it’s not something that gets taught in school. I knew the difference between cups, tablespoons, and teaspoons. But what I couldn’t grasp was the measurement amounts. This particular recipe called for 11/2 cups of flour. What I couldn’t understand was why the recipe used unsimplified fractions. 11 over 2 cups of flour is actually 5 and a half cups. I did that calculation all on my own and thought to myself how proud my math teacher would have been that I figured that out. Regardless, I just stood there shaking my head wondering why the recipe couldn’t have just simplified that fraction in the first place.

Now, you’re probably thinking…why in the world would a recipe call for 11/2 cups of flour? Well. Turns out I could do math but apparently I couldn’t read.

The recipe ACTUALLY called for 1 and 1/2 cups of flour and my small 6th grade brain straight up interpreted that as 11/2 cups, which is the equivalent to 5 and 1/2 cups.

So there I was, adding in 5 and 1/2 cups of flour to the bowl with no second thought about it. I added in the rest of the ingredients, of which had regular measurements and not ones that I had to simplify myself. I noticed the dough seemed kind of dry, but didn’t question it too much. After all, what did I know about homemade cookies? I was just following the recipe (or so I thought).

Then, the instructions had me wrap the dough in saran wrap and refrigerate it for a few hours. I thought that was going to be the key step in making this dough turn from powder to a sticky and moldable ball.

Sure enough, 3 hours go by and it has not turned into a dough. At this point, I was so confused on what was wrong with it since I followed the recipe exactly as it was. Frustrated, I called my mom into the kitchen to see if she knew why the dough didn’t form yet. The first question she asked me after looking at my pile of seran wrapped powder was, “how much flour did you use?” And oh so confidently I said “5 and 1/2 cups.” The pure level of concern on my mom’s face after I said that instantly made my gut spin. It was in that moment that I actually heard what I said and how absolutely silly it sounded.

My poor mother felt so bad for me. She showed me how the recipe actually said 1 1/2 cups and that the space in between the two ones was there for a reason. She did everything she could to salvage those cookies by tripling the other ingredients to just make a bigger batch. We ended up with probably a hundred cookies and no idea what to do with them.

I wish the story had a happy ending, but honestly, the cookies sucked. Big time sucked.

And there you have it, my first baking fail in the kitchen. There have been many more failures to follow, but this particular story is one I will never live down. If someone would have told my middle school self that later on I would have a party and food blog, I would probably look at them and laugh.