Ahh, the sweet, sweet defeat of the Pinterest Fail. I have been an avid user of Pinterest over the past four years and have even made some of the recipes. “Look at me!”, you say. “What a perfect ~domestic goddess~.” Or, back in reality, the most common question is, “did it work?!”
What came first, Pinterest or the Pinterest fail? There is something that ties Pinterest so closely to failures it’s hard to even have hope. But after trying over 120 Pinterest tips, trick, recipes and crafts, I’ve had an alarmingly high success rate! But when they fail, they failll. Visions of confused Girl Guides with bottles of Mountain Dew filled with hydrogen peroxide and my hands stained for weeks in nail polish, trying to get a “super cute watercolour flower pot!”, fill my mind, but a recipe I can follow. A recipe is a recipe. Straightforward, follow the directions, eat.
Until these cookies.
As a wanna be domestic goddess, I have a pantry that rivals most actual grown up adults (I guess I’m not one). But, with a tiny room, I lack the storage. Recipes often call for a part of an ingredients, and the leftovers sit abandoned at the back of the cupboard, taking up space and severely annoying me. I had most of a box of graham crackers, and I found a recipe from Get in My Belly, called Graham Cracker Chocolate Chip Cookies. “Perfect! So easy and will be great for the gang! What good luck I thought!” It was a simpler time.
“Use up ingredients,” I say, “it will be wonderful.” I say.
What went wrong? I only have my speculations. One friend suggested I should have used graham cracker crumbs, instead of crushing them myself. I also was impatient and microwaved my butter to soft it (hey it didn’t melt all the way!). But even with these in mind, it felt like the batter was missing a binding ingredient, as I pretty much has to knead the chocolate chips in. The picture posted on the website shows thin, crispy cookies while mine didn’t spread at all. None of my 3 batches baked in 7 minutes; the average was 15 minutes, and the 2nd and 3rd batch I cooked at 375F. The taste is okay, but I don’t think I would make them again. I’ve been burnt bad.
Does the plate make them look any better?
Graham Cracker Chocolate Chip Cookies
Recipe exactly from Get in my Belly (see my adjustments above)
Yield (mine): 24 misshapen beasts
- 1/2 cup Butter, room temperature
- 1 cup Brown sugar
- 2 tsp Vanilla
- 1 Egg
- 1 1/2 cups Graham cracker crumbs
- 3/4 cup All purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp Baking soda
- 1/4 tsp Salt
- 1 cup Chocolate chips
1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until creamy.
3. Beat in the vanilla and egg until well combined.
4. In a medium bowl, combine the graham cracker crumbs, flour, baking soda, and salt.
5. Gradually add to the butter mixture until just combined.
6. Stir in the chocolate chips.
7. Grease pan with cooking sray.
8. Bake for 7 minutes.
9. Cookies will look slightly underdone, but should set up nicely as they cool.
10. Enjoy!
the stay at home student 