For my birthday two Saturdays ago (the same day I failed at doughnuts), my parents gave me a cookie cookbook as a gift. It’s called “1 dough, 100 cookies”. And it’s o-mazing. My parents didn’t know this, but I had actually flipped through the book at Barnes N Nobel some time before. I fanaticized about the idea of mastering only one recipe and being able to make one HUNDRED cookies. Seemed too good to be true. . Never know unless you try, though, and this blog is about trying even if the chances are high that you’ll fail, sooo let’s get started.

         Since there’s no point in purposing to bake a cookie you don’t have ingredients for, I scanned the list of stuff I’d need. There was always this one irritating ingredient I didn’t have. It was starting to get on my nerves. But then I came across “Chocolate Buttons”. By George, I think she’s got it.

         The way to bake them is by mixing two packets of chocolate drink mix with hot water to make a paste, cream the butter and sugar (I found that leaving the butter out while you set everything up and then sticking it in the microwave for ten seconds works perfectly to soften it enough that it doesn’t give your poor arm a work out when mixing), sift flour, salt, yada-yada, there’s an egg yolk somewhere in there, divide into two balls, wrap in plastic wrap, and stick ‘em in the fridge “for 30-60 minutes”. That’s in quotes because this one threw me off. Is it that after exactly thirty minutes I can start baking? And is sixty minutes the maximum time it can stay in the fridge or else? Why does it give a max amount? Every time I’ve had a recipe that called for the dough to be refrigerated, it crashed and burned. Or, more literally, it stayed mush. . so I was a little bit scared. On top of that, I didn’t know we didn’t have parchment paper. Yet another dent in my plans. I had to wait until the next day. This is how I found out that it’s okay if you go over the sixty-minute-fridge-time mark.

         The cookbook gives an exact measurement of the cookie cutter to use. That can be both useful and upsetting. I mean, you do want to know what kind of cutter you need, but to find that you don’t have the right one doesn’t help the self confidence any. Still, I sandwiched the dough in between two pieces of my newly bought parchment paper, rolled it out into 1/8^th of an inch (about two fingernails in my mind. Oh, make sure the bottom paper doesn’t wrinkle or else it will make your dough creased) and I started punching in circles. 

         Pathetically enough, I was excited about this. The dough was actually normal! Cool! I just had to figure out the best way to use the cookie cutters, since this was my first time not doing simple “drop by rounded teaspoons”. I found that punching as many circles as possible into the dough and then peeling away the access worked best. Then, I’d use a water bottle cap (don’t worry, I washed it first) to make the indent in the middle of the button and swirled a toothpick in a 4-dotted square to make it look official. Plop on a cookie sheet, sprinkle superfine sugar on it, and you’re done.