It has been cold, so I thought I’d bake something. I didn’t want to order from the ‘Net and no one seems to carry sultanas locally, so I decided against oatmeal cookies. Most people don’t bother to soak their raisins or sultanas in wine for a few hours before using them, so they tend to be hard.

I went with my second choice – chocolate chip based on the original Toll House recipe.

The recipe gives a laughable timeline: 39 minutes to cookies,

Reality involved finding a really good flashlight to scan the cupboards for a 3 quart bowl & two 1 quart bowls, the electric mixer, the beaters for the electric mixer, the cookie sheets, the cooling racks, the parchment paper, the spatula, the scoop, and the measuring cups & spoons.

The timeline also neglected taking everything out of the oven and finding a place for it. Then there was the time spent locating the step stool to be used to remove the battery from the smoke detector in the living room about 5 minutes into cooking the first batch. The process starts hours earlier when you take the two sticks of butter out of fridge to soften so you can cream in the sugar and vanilla.

After all of this I looked at the cost and devised a new system – put out the cooling racks and go to the store to buy three bags of Pepperidge Farm Chesapeake cookies. Open the bags and put the cookies on the racks and dump the bags in someone else’s wheelie bin.

The cookies I made are thicker and softer than the Chesapeakes, but the cost are close to the same for the ingredients. The chocolate chips and pecans are almost $7!

Update: From 2008 Kryten’s Grandmother’s Double Chocolate Walnut Biscotti recipe.