The Kitchen of the Sahara Continues
So I tried this new cookie recipe from the newspaper and what a giant forking disaster. I was supposed to beat some butter with sugars and then add a mixture of flour, cocoa and baking soda. There was salt, baking soda and vanilla as well. The recipe said it might be a tad crumbly but not to worry about it. Divide my dough.

Does anyone see a problem here?

I actually stood there with the recipe in my hand thinking: okay, I know what a stick of butter is, right? I know what a cup of flour is, right? I even know that if you just scoop your measuring cup in the flour you're likely to scoop too much so I don't do it that way. I have no idea what went wrong but either the recipe was corrected later and I missed it or the magical drying vortex of my kitchen struck again.

That pile of dust can't even fake being dough. Side note: the scary red color comes from the raspberry-chocolate chips.

I gamely packed my dust into logs by sheer force of will and wrapped them tightly! with plastic wrap and stuck them in the freezer. Then I made the gumbo which turned out fantastic. There are few cooking smells as delicious as when the finely chopped celery, onion and bell pepper hit the roux in the pan.

Time to bake the cookies.

That red thing is the silicone baking mat which at this point, I don't love or hate. The recipe said not to worry if when I sliced my cookies, they got a little crumbly, just stick the cookie bits back together.

The cookies that look like turds? Those are crumbs I squeezed in my fist to get them to hold together.

The whole mess was still crumbly out of the oven but I thought what the hell: we'll call it scrapple. Wikipedia says that scrapple is a savory mush and something about offal. What's that stuff they have at the frozen yogurt store that looks like cookie crumbles? I thought they called that scrapple.

Bob ate half the pan and said they were great.