Cookie Fail!

The kids had begged me for two weeks to buy some wild cherry jelly they saw at Walmart.

Boo tried it when I finally gave in and declared that it tastes exactly like cherry JELL-O. This would be good if JELL-O tasted good on toast or sandwiches, but it doesn't.

At a loss what to do with the stuff, other than throw it away because it won't get eaten, my mother-in-law suggested I try baking with it. I love jam thumbprint cookies and figured that cherry would be just as good as the raspberry that I usually use.

I looked at the recipe in my favorite cookbook, and realized that it required butter, not margarine; I had no butter in the house. So, I went searching online for a recipe that I could use margarine in. I found one where someone had commented that they used margarine instead of butter and the cookies turned out great; I decided to give it a try.

I looked over the recipe a couple of times, and when I was finished mixing it up, I rechecked the recipe to make sure that I had put everything in it. This is what I got when I baked them:

I wish I had taken a pic while they were still on the pan. They looked like fried eggs with pink middles instead of yellow. This pic is the result of trying to get them off the baking sheet.

I was not about to let the cookie dough go to waste, so I added 1/2 tsp. of baking powder (aha! the missing ingredient) and 1/4 cup of flour and mixed the dough again. The second pan of cookies was much better!

The moral?? Check the ingredients; if something seems off, it probably is. It's very rare that I bake a cookie that doesn't require either baking soda or baking powder...

I was going to post a link to the recipe here, but I'm reluctant to bash someone else's work. It's also entirely possible that I missed something when writing it down.