Don't You Wish Your Girlfriend Could Bake Like Me

So I was minding my own business, cleaning Taylor Swift’s poop from my grandma’s porch in the freezing cold weather when I got what some would call a “wild hair up my butt” and decided to make enchiladas.  Typically my culinary skills are more humorous than productive but enchiladas I can do.  After dry heaving from my task, I went back inside and announced my plans.  Grandma and I checked the freezer and discovered I would need to go out to the well house to fetch some hamburger meat.  My grandma and grandpa are never short on beef since they butcher their own cows, one of the reasons I no longer allow myself to get emotionally close to livestock.  It’s difficult when they’re babies because they aren’t hideous yet but as they get older, uglier, and more annoying, establishing emotional boundaries is much easier.  Anyway, I went out to the well house to fetch a pound of beef and inspected what else they had in their stock freezer.  There were bags upon bags of chocolate chips.  I resisted the urge to open a bag and inhale the contents and ran inside to announce that I would be making chocolate chip cookies.  Halfway to the house I realized I forgot the hamburger and had to go back and get it.  I announced my plans upon entering through the back door, while also announcing I had stepped in either dog or cow shit which was impossible to see because of the snow.  My grandma looked slightly annoyed, either from the poop or my eager plan to bake or both.  It is well known that 97% of the time my baking results in an explosion or dry heaves.  I have even turned substances appropriate for human consumption into poison.  It felt like poison anyway.  The last time I baked Makayla said, “You’re like a chef on the cooking show only you’re the one who gets yelled at.”   I made dinner, washed dishes, and got to work on my cookies.  Grandma had already gotten all of my supplies ready since I have a bad habit of just starting my baking project and finding out halfway through that I’m missing important things that I need.  That’s when I improvise.  Out of flour?  Corn meal is like flour.  Out of vanilla?  Try whiskey.  Grandma went to the living room to her chair, a good spot since she could keep an eye on what I was doing from there.  The first instruction was to place two sticks of softened butter in the bowel.  Grandma had already asked if I wanted plastic or glass and I assured her plastic was a much more appropriate item for me to handle.  Especially since she likes her glass bowels and I have a habit of breaking things.  I held up the two sticks of butter so she could see and said, “It says these need to be soft.  Are these already-“  I cut myself short as my stealth grip sent butter oozing between my fingers and it exploded out of the paper.

“Well shit.  It begins,” I said.

“What?” Grandma asked.

“It’s fine!” I hollered back, “Everything is under control.”

Next the recipe called for ¼ cup of sugar.  Naturally I dumped a cup of sugar into the bowel because I thought it had said one and one fourths cup.

“Crap!” I yelled, “It’s ruined already.”

I explained my mistake and went to dump some sugar in the sink.  Grandma hollered at me not to do that and to just not put as much brown sugar in.  Duh.  She also instructed me not to get shells in the batter.  She told me not to splatter batter everywhere with the mixer.  I mixed the ingredients together and asked her if it was fluffy enough since the recipe instructed me to mix until fluffy.  She assured me it was.  The second step was flour, vanilla pudding mix, baking soda, and chocolate chips. 

“I forgot the eggs!” I screeched.

“No you didn’t,” Grandma said, “I watched you put them in.”

Ok.  Good.

Since the recipe called for instant vanilla pudding, I went about making the pudding.

“Just the mix Jess,” Grandma said, seeing me contemplating the box of pudding to figure out how to make it.

“Oh!” I said, “That’s much easier.”

I dumped the mix and flour and chips in the bowel.  I started mixing and remembered the baking soda.  Then I went on mixing and was very alarmed at what was happening.  The dough was forming one large ball all around the mixer.

“Ummmm,” I said, “This is odd.”

I continued mixing and the ball got bigger and bigger until all the dough was just a big ball around the mixing blades.  I was about to put the mixer on full blast so it would spray it all off and figured I’d catch as much as possible in the bowel but grandma came in to assist me and laughed at my dough ball.

“I have never seen someone blend like that!” she said, claiming I nearly made her pee her pants.  Apparently I was supposed to put the flour and stuff in a different bowel and slowly blend it in with the fluffy stuff.  We scraped the batter off back into the bowel and I mixed it with a spatula.  Then I spooned drops of dough onto a cookie sheet.  My grandmother studied my dough balls and told me to make them a little smaller.  I told her I’ve always been a fan of bigger balls.  Once the dough balls were in the oven my grandma turned on the oven light and I sat in front of the oven to watch them cook.  “They aren’t cooking!” I informed my grandmother.  She shooed me out and told me to come get them out when the timer went off.  When it did, I flew into the kitchen and pulled my cookies out.  We put them on paper to cool and Grandma took a bite out of one.  She claimed it was good while offering me a bite.  I searched her face for signs of deception or distress.  She showed signs of neither.  I took a bite and the cookie was actually good.  I finally baked something edible.  Not only edible but enjoyable.  I have pictures for proof.