Not Exactly The Recipe, But...

There are many good cooks who stick with making "food" and stay away from the "more exact science" of cakes, cookies and breads.  I, too, used to think that cakes, cookies and breads were like chemistry formulas.  If you changed one of the ingredients or quantities you'd be stuck with an inedible disaster. But I have discovered more and more that it's not true.

One of my favorite cookie recipe, OK the truth is that it's my favorite cookie recipe is for the 1, 2, 3 cookies.  One of my sons would do almost anything for them.  The key to making them is to have a kitchen scale and to weigh each of the three basic ingredients to make sure that

• for every 100 grams of sugar, or 4 oz you have
• twice as much of melted no salt baking margarine
• three times as much flour

You can add cinnamon, chopped nuts or a squirt of vanilla plus chocolate chips for flavor.

• Mix all the ingredients, doubled, tripled etc.
• spread packed on a lined baking pan and bake in medium heat
• cut immediately after taking out of the oven

Well, I had decided to surprise my kids by making them for Purim.  At the last minute I rushed into the supermarket and bought a package of margarine.  Oops! I only bought one, totally forgetting that I always triple the recipe.  And to complicate things further, I couldn't find my kitchen scale.

I was stuck, but I'm too stubborn and determined and risk-taking creative to let that minor/major problem to stop me when I'm trying to make my grown up kids happy.  To get 900 grams of flour I just poured from a 1 kilo (which is 1,000 grams) bag and left a bit in the bag.  I then poured what seemed to be less than a half of a bag of brown sugar, since 333 grams is a bit less than 500 grams.  I added a couple of eggs and enough oil until I got the right consistency.  And I added lots of cinnamon.

Then I baked it as usual.  Sorry, but I don't have a picture.  And the final result was that they didn't even notice the difference.  It tasted exactly like they remembered.  If I hadn't told them that I had made a change, nobody would have known.