Cookie Catastrophe

There's nothing better than homemade chocolate chip cookies. Can I get an Amen? No matter how accustomed to the store-bought kind I get, there's nothing like a homemade chocolate chip cookie.

However, despite how much I like them, I have never before made them, myself. Not once. Not from scratch. I've done the Pillsbury roll, and I've done break 'n' bake, but never before have I started with just some flour, sugar, eggs, and, of course, chocolate chips.

Every now and then, the idea will flit across my mind. I might even go so far as to look up recipes on the internet or pull out some - you won't believe this - real cookbooks and see what I can find. But I've never actually gone through with it.

Until tonight, that is.

With my raging Fishlet success of last night, I was feeling pretty handy in the kitchen. Like I could do just about anything - certainly bake chocolate chip cookies. So I picked up eggs and chocolate chips on the way home and, after a fabulous dinner of pork ribs that my husband fixed on the grill, decided to give it a try.

Seriously, the ribs were awesome. I never need to go to Tony Roma's again - I'll just have my husband make them from now on. But I digress.

I followed the recipe, mixing things in little bowls here and there before adding them to the big bowl on the stand mixer - in the order specified in the recipe. I even tasted a bit of the raw dough - gasp! - a shocker for me, because I usually avoid eating anything with raw eggs in it. It tasted yummy. I couldn't wait for the cookies to be done.

I placed them on the baking sheets, and popped them in the oven, then took off to try to soothe my two (by now) screaming toddlers. (I don't think either one of them napped today. It has not been a pretty evening in our household.) I finally got both of them to settle down in my lap for a few minutes of peace.

"What does it smell like?" my astute 2.5-year-old daughter asked, all of a sudden.

"Cookies!" I replied blithely and happily, anticipating the warm, chewy, chocolatey goodness that awaited us.

I should have taken the hint.

A few minutes later, the timer on the oven went off. "Yay, cookies are done!" I crowed in excitement.

As I entered the kitchen, I sensed something was amiss. Maybe it was the - was that steam? Yes, surely it was just steam - pouring from the steam vent in the back of the stove. Despite my continuing optimism, I couldn't suppress an image that flitted across my brain of me opening the oven to have smoke come billowing out, National Lampoon-style.

I pulled out the oven mitts, opened the oven door...and sure enough, out poured enough smoke to make me cough and set our smoke detector to screaming in agony. I frantically pulled the cookie sheets out, and without taking a moment to be dismayed by the flat, black, pathetic little excuses for cookies that were splattered all over the sheet, I grabbed a third cookie sheet and began fanning the smoke detector.

Once I got it calmed down, I turned back to the stove and saw this:

Sigh.

The cookies on the second sheet weren't quite as bad - just flat, not burned - so at least I was able to give my daughter something. And truthfully, I don't think she even noticed. My son even ate a few bites.

But I noticed. And I am sad.

But not too sad to go pour a cup of milk and have a couple of deflated cookies before I go to bed.