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An Epic Fail

Call me crazy, but I like to bake. I know it’s not fashionable these days, but I blame it on my DNA. Mother baked almost every day of her life for 40 years. Compared to her, I’m a piker. I only bake twice each week. The reason? I take homemade cookies for my game-playing buddies to devour. To make it more interesting, I never bake the same recipe twice. This allows me to try new ones and foist the experiments on my helpless victims.


After I’ve fed the game-players, I give cookies to the golfers, back to the clubhouse from play and ready for lunch. As I approach with “the cookie bucket,” they ask, “What’s our cookie today, Carol?” Sometimes they call me “Cookie Lady,” which makes me smile. In fact, the whole exercise reminds me of hungry boys coming home from school. I never raised boys, but my sister did and I remember they could eat varnish off the woodwork.


So recently I chose what sounded like a good bar cookie recipe, posted online by a well-known chef. (I’ll omit her name, to keep her from getting killed by a disappointed mob.) I have always loved Gingerbread and this one sounded especially good, with lots of fresh ginger. I noticed the recipe required the expertise of Julia Child and the arm strength of a Sumo wrestler, but I soldiered on.


After mixing the goo by hand, I slid the cake pan into the oven, like an expectant mother in her ninth month. It smelled wonderful, if a bit strong. Here it is after I pulled it out of the oven. After my masterpiece cooled, I dumped the contents of the pan on the counter to cut it into squares.


BIG MISTAKE. A center chunk stayed in the pan, leaving a crater-sized hole. Never mind. I scraped the stuck piece from the pan and pressed it back in place. Then I sliced off the hard corners and cut it into squares. A sample piece delivered quite a wallop of flavor—tongue-burning strong. And those little pieces of ginger were like biting into tiny granite chips.


I reluctantly shared my squares, warning everyone for the sake of their dental work. As I feared, most ditched their servings in their napkins, under their plate rims, or in the potted plants.


That recipe was assigned to the circular file by this Old School baker, my first epic fail of the new year.

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