The Curse of the Crispy Bois
I nearly avoided the tsuris that befell me last night. Really, I almost did.
Because I don’t like crispy cookies. A nice crisp can be appropriate on a Girl Scout cookie or an Oreo, but when I’m making cookies in my home, I want those puppies soft. Pillowy. Practically gnocchi-like, right down to the fact that the only crunch I allow is a whisper of a char on a pan-baked edge. Crispy cookies simply can’t stand up to their fluffier siblings, and, left to my own devices, I wouldn’t bake them.
But this is a quest. I may not make every cookie in the 100 Cookies book, but I want to make most — and, though I considered it, skipping Thin and Crispy Chocolate Chip Cookies and Thin and Crispy Double Chocolate Chip Cookies seemed too finicky.
My friends, I should have finicked.
Since these recipes were near-identical, I decided I would split my batter and make the batch half and half — and that is where the Curse of the Crispy Bois began. I laid out twice as many bowls as usual and, when I divided the dough, did so carefully, weighing out the halves one prissy little scoop at a time. But, like an idiot, I forgot that, if only one half needs the cocoa powder required for double chocolate, I should halve the amount of powder that I use. I realized this mistake mere seconds after making it, and, to my surprise, I managed to more or less reverse the cocoa avalanche. (Hint: If you have accidentally coated your dough in twice as much of something as you should have, shake it vigorously over your mixing vessel. You will now have both a salvaged dough and a fun new definition of “dust bowl.”)
I thought my woes would end there, but, as you can probably infer, they did not!
Of the first two half-dozens I baked, one congealed into a single cookie continent, and the other, though remaining as separate cookies, burned to — ahem — a crisp. I next tried baking just four dough balls instead of the book-recommended six and, despite the football field of space I gave them all, ended up with Cookie Pangaea once more. I sliced the giants along their barely discernible borders (landing me with such bizarre-looking “cookies” as the parallelogram pictured above), and I readied myself for one more tray.
This foursome, finally, seemed good. I kept a close eye on them through the first half of their baking, and they didn’t seem to have issues. They weren’t melting together, they weren’t burning — they were perfect!
And then the oven door broke.
Yes, I know that the broiler drawer is also crooked. I’m on a budget, okay?
Halfway through the bake, I pulled the handle as always to pop the door open and rotate the tray, and one end of said handle FELL OFF. Apparently, two little screws are all that keeps an oven door handle where it belongs, and one of mine issued her (very rude) resignation last night. I managed to pry the door open by its sides, so, to prevent further disaster, I took out the halfway-to-perfect, never-to-be-eaten cookies and gave up.
By the night’s one stroke of good luck, the screw had fallen where I could recover it, so my boyfriend was able to fix the door this morning. But lest you think the curse ends there, be sure: It does not.
While cleaning my kitchen and my mind of this fiasco today, I knelt down to reach a low shelf and found a bowl full of dough. In the commotion, I’d shoved the remainder of my unbaked cookies anywhere I could find space — and promptly forgotten them.
I knew these crispy cookies would be trouble, but, dear readers, I could not have dreamt just how much trouble they would be. The book’s dark-sided tango with the Crispy Bois ends with these, and I, for one, am ready to return to the fluffy-cookie light. Join me next time, and remember: avoid the Crispy Bois and you’ll avoid the curse.