When I found out that August 4th is National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day, I decided that I had to celebrate! And what better way to celebrate, than by baking (and eating) cookies. Therein lies my problem. I’m terrible at baking. When it comes to baking, I have no patience to actually measure out the ingredients and be precise. As you can imagine, this generally does not bode well for my baked goods. They are always a disaster.
So what was I to do in such a predicament? Well, I scoured the web and found a recipe for 3-ingredient chocolate chip cookies. The recipe seemed extremely simple – so easy that even I couldn’t mess it up (or could I?). So In honor of National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day, I’ll be baking and trying out these cookies.
The recipe called for just three ingredients: peanut butter (or sunbutter), maple syrup, and chocolate chips. Surprisingly, I actually had all these ingredients at home already! That never happens, so it looks like I’m off to a good start here.
Step one is to mix the PB and maple syrup in a bowl, then fold in the chocolate chips. Once fully mixed, you freeze the mixture for an hour. Ugh, a full hour? I had to stay strong and resist the temptation to sneak a spoonful to taste-test (or “poison-control”, as we call it in our house … you know, to be sure our food’s not accidentally life-threatening😆)
Finally the hour was over (ok, it was more like 53 minutes 🤷♂️) and I was ready for the next step. Pre-heat the oven (easy), and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Uh-oh. I ran out of parchment paper. I always have parchment in the house, but of course, this is the one time I’m out. Oh well, when life gives you lemons, you use a muffin pan, right?
I rolled the cookie “dough” into 12 total cookie balls per the instructions, and put them in my muffin pan. This was pretty simple to do, and I was surprised that it wasn’t messy or sticky. One of my cookies came out significantly smaller than the rest, but we’ll just ignore that part, right?
The recipe called for 10-12 minutes in the oven, which is great because, once again, I have no patience. Those ten minutes were rough though – longest 10 minutes of my life! Finally they were over – I took the cookies out … and they still didn’t look ready. These cookies were still the consistency of peanut butter. Ugh! I decided to keep baking until they seemed like the proper consistency. Ultimately, I kept them in the oven for a total of about 25 very-long minutes. When they were finally done, they were a bit on the dark side, but at least they were crispy and not mushy. I let them cool off, and they were finally ready to eat!
After they cooled off, they actually got slightly more firm (but still pretty soft). When I broke one in half, it crumbled into 14 little chunks instead of a clean break. Oh well, I could live with the darkness and the crumbliness. Whatever, right? Then came the taste test – the moment I had been waiting for for the past 90 minutes, give or take. This is where everything goes horribly wrong. These were just awful. Maybe it’s the fact that I had them in the oven so long (yeah, it was most likely because of this), or maybe these were just so different from traditional cookies. Either way, Craig and I each took a bite, and then immediately tossed all the cookies in the trash. They were just that bad.
If you want to try baking these yourself even after hearing my horror story, here’s the recipe. Just do yourself a favor and don’t continue to bake these, even if they still feel like peanut butter.
Ingredients
- 1 cup peanut butter (smooth)
- 1/3 cup maple syrup
- 1 cup chocolate chips
Recipe
- Add the peanut butter and maple syrup into a bowl and mix until combined, then fold in the chocolate chips.
- Cover the bowl and freeze for one hour.
- Preheat the oven to 350F.
- While the oven is preheating, line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Form 12 balls of dough and place them on the cookie sheet.
- Bake for 10-12 minutes. Let them cool completely, and enjoy.
So that’s my National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day celebration attempt. Task has failed successfully.
Next time, I promise that I’ll stay far far away from baking. From now on, I’ll just leave it to the professional bakers out there, who actually know what they’re doing.
