A LA SWISTLE

Look through somebody’s blog archives and discover you REALLY want Swistle's Chocolate Mint Brownies. Realize there are no mint chocolate baking chips in London. Weep a little bit. Discover regular chocolate chips in drawer and wonder if you can do something else. Discover Swistle: Postpartum Chocolate Chip Cookies. Rejoice.

Find out you only have a little bit over a cup left of flour. Weep again. Come up with plan B which consists in halving the recipe. Do a little celebration dance in the kitchen. Take it into the living room where husband joins in. Love him for silly-dancing with you without blinking.

Realize recipe calls for something called Crisco. Be terrified of googling it, but do it anyway because you really want these cookies. Realize it’s just shortening. Love your husband again for having it in the fridge.

Remember the reason you have done no baking in London is because you do not own a mixer. Close eyes and wish for a mixer to appear on your counter. Open eyes and wonder if you can ‘cream Crisco and sugars’ by hand. Remember you do not own a mixing bowl either. Weep a little bit again and use pot from Ikea instead. Mush Crisco and sugar until arm hurts. Feel a bit ashamed that you have a cooking degree and do not a) know how to mix things by hand and b) know what the ‘creamed’ result should look like. Also feel ashamed about not having any cooking tools. Concentrate on having warm cookies in mouth and keep mixing. Add in rest of ingredients. Realize recipe calls for 170grams of chocolate chips and you only have 100. Pray for cookies to taste nice anyway.

Wonder what size ‘lumps of dough’ should be put on pan. Have no idea and improvise. Think of taking pictures for posting this odyssey later. Get annoyed at husband for using up camera's battery and forgetting charger at work. Put cookies in oven. Remember European ovens have a fan and lower temperature. Feel totally smart about this. Feel like you have overcome every single cookie hurdle in the world. You are super-cookie baker. Dance a little more in kitchen.

When alarm goes off notice cookies have not flattened out. Also notice they seem a bit puffy. Discover you forgot to halve the baking powder. Go back to recipe and discover it called for baking soda, and not powder. Laugh deep belly laughs because there is nothing more to do. Taste cookies. They are not bad warm but later discover they are horrible cold. Feel happy anyway, because baking was fun.

Come to the web to link back to recipes. Discover this, (which required no mint chocolate chips, no Crisco, no mixer, only 1 cup of flour, no baking soda or powder, no figuring out lump size and only one mixing bowl).

Laugh manically till you weep.