Horrible Hermits

Started to do a little Christmas baking today.

What a disaster.

I had enough time this afternoon to make one kind of cookie so I chose one of my favorites - hermits. A friend from the knitwits gave me this recipe a long time ago. She makes them for us every Christmas and I love, love, love this cookie.

I decided to double the recipe and started throwing all the ingredients together. I was a bit surprised at how fast the bowl filled up. Who knew four cups of sugar and eight cups of flour and three cups of shortening could take up so much room? Not to mention all the teaspoons of spices I had to add to it.

Gulp.

That dough was pretty close to the top and I had to beat in the final two cups of flour. I decided to play it safe and mix the dough by hand until the flour was incorporated into the dough. So I mixed it up and then turned the mixer on to give it a final whirl.

Mistake. Dough pieces flew everywhere. What a mess.

After I cleaned up all those pesky little pieces of dough, I added the nuts and raisins and mixed it all up. I formed the dough into two log rolls and put the tray in the oven. I set the timer and waited for the house to start smelling like Christmas.

The recipe said to cook until the cookies are a dark brown.

Uh-oh. These never turned brown. Not even when I added an extra ten minutes to the baking time. They just wouldn't turn brown. I kept checking on them and nothing. Sand color. No dark brown color.

I looked at the recipe.

Cream shortening and sugar together. Check.

Blah, blah, blah, skipped over the next sentence and went right to mix flour and baking soda and spices. Check.

Shape like little logs and bake for such and such time at such and such temperature. Check.

Hmmm. I wonder what the sentence I skipped over said?

It said, "Add molasses and two eggs."

What? How did I miss that?

I totally skipped that part. It's no wonder the cookies came out dry, crumbly, and the color of sand. I forgot two key ingredients.

I tossed out the first batch. And wanted to cry. But I put on my big girl pants and tried to figure out how to fix this mess.

I guessed how many batches of raw dough I had left and added the appropriate amount of molasses and eggs. Sort of.

One of the batches seemed a bit on the dry side so I added a little more molasses. Guess work, that's how I bake.

I'm amazed they came out as good as they did.

I can't wait to make them again.

And follow directions this time.