Amy sent me this link via email today and I shall now share it with you.
She did me the honour of saying that I was slightly better than that.  Not much but a little.
During the summer between the end of OAC and the beginning of college, I was working for a temp agency and getting my driver’s license.  As a  result I was home funny hours and had very little to do.  I actually successfully baked several loaves of bread but that’s not really entertaining in any way so it is not the focus of this Episode.
I spent a great deal of time watching TV and, having no cable, my options were fairly limited, particularly in the middle of the day. Â Being no particular fan of soap operas, I often found myself watching James Barber, the Urban Peasant. Â He would cook various dishes and provide commentary whilst doing so (pretty typical cooking show stuff). Â
One afternoon, he was baking cookies and I decided about halfway through the show that I would make cookies, too. Â I hadn’t been paying particularly close attention to the show or made any special note of quantities or ratios of ingredients. Â Or even particular note of which ingredients ought to be part of these cookies. Â I was set on baking cookies.
My mom really enjoys baking and has a great many cookbooks in a cupboard over the fridge. Â I didn’t so much as glance in that direction as I made my preparations. Â I had caught enough to know that the cookies had flour, sugar, butter and eggs in them. Â I decided to add chocolate chips to the mix (who doesn’t like chocolate chip cookies, honestly) and go to town.
I mixed up my ingredients to what I felt was a good cookie-dough consistency and made balls of them to bake on cookie sheets.  I didn’t then (and still don’t) believe in pre-heating the oven so I tossed the sheet in and set it to around 400°F.  I did have the good sense to hang around in the kitchen while this was going on.  I could tell there was something amiss virtually from the get-go.  The cookies softened and slumped (as they ought) and continued to slump.  And then did some more slumping.  Then the butter melted completely and ran out of its floury prison, taking the chocolate chips along as hostages so the guards wouldnt’ shoot.
I quickly pulled the remains of the first dozen out and scraped them into the garbage (after leaving enough time to cool that they didn’t melt the bag but not so much that they solidified). Â I added quite a bit more flour to the remainder of the “dough” as well as more sugar (who would want floury cookies after all). Â I had run completely out of chocolate chips by this point so my usual policy of just enough dough to hold the chocolate together had to be dismissed.
The second, third and fourth dozen went significantly better but due to the expansion of the recipe, each cookie had about 3 chocolate chips in it. Â Â The cookies were also hard little rockish things (I know now that things like baking powder/baking soda exist to help prevent such things. Â I still do not know the difference between them beyond the fact that you can combine baking soda with vinegar to create highly realistic volcanoes). Â They went over rather well, on the whole. Â If I had it to do over again, I would have bought more chocolate chips.