Failure Biscuits

This post in itself is also a failure, as it seemed much more amusing in my head about four days ago when it actually happened. But sadly, there is not always time in my busy, busy life to just bash out a blog, so this is a retrospective account of my biscuit botching.

Once apon a time...well, on  Tuesday to be exact, I was feeling very productive and grown up, having just come back from a meeting with a magazine who want me to write with them (but more on that another time...). I rushed back home, quickly dashed off a piece of homework, and was preparing to go out and babysit when I remembered that there was a form picnic the next day, and that I'd promised (more to myself than to anyone else), that I would make cakes.

I looked at the clock. Half an hour before I needed to be round the corner to spend an hour munching on a kind lady's biscuits under the pretence of looking after her children. The newly-empowered, 'have it all' me scoffed: 'That is plenty of time to bake!"

To the fridge, I thought! I will make like Nigella and just dash off a batch of fairycakes in my spare time. Plus, it will be fun-how cool and domesticated am I if I can relax through cooking?

Then my plans were scuppered-only one egg in the fridge! Never mind, said my capable self, I'll find another recipe.

And find another recipe I did-this time for biscuits. There it was, naively and neatly written in blue fountain pen  from my days as an 11 year old food technology student, with such helpful hints as "Step 1: "Put on apron, wash hands, prepare workstation, tie up hair."Well duh.

So, as they say in France, on commence! I magically found a bar of Cadbury's in the cupboard and decided to whack that and some marshmallows in for good measure. To cut a long story short, I seived and mixed and mixed and stirred and diced chocolate and mixed some more until I had what my teacher said should resemble "dough".

My efforts did not resemble "dough". In fact, it was as far away from "dough" as it is possible to be. Breadcrumbs with lumps of chocolate, maybe, but definitely not prime biscuit material.
It was at this point that I realised my efforts were in vain and  I would not be presenting beautifully soft and chew choc-chip cookies to my class in the morning. No applause and cheers for my culinary genius, no sir.

But, I persevered! Alas, my dough would not come together to be rolled out no matter how hard I tried and time was ticking on. So I gamely took five pitiful handfuls and squished them down with my hands to make five blobby messes. Then, I dashed out of the door, leaving behind a dirty kitchen and a trail of flour.

When I returned from babysitting, I was greeted with this:

The observant ones amongst you will realise that there are only four pitiful handfuls on this tray. Wellll...I have to admit that I ate one. They looked so disgusting that I just had to check that I wasn't going to inadvertantly poison my loved ones.

Luckily, they tasted delicious! The chocolate was just at the perfect stage of half meltyness. The marshmallows had disappeared (one of life's great mysteries that) but the biscuits tasted as yummy as ever and were quickly gobbled up by my family in record time of about 17 hours.

So there you have it. Like cross-stich, knitting and card-making, another one of my attempts at being domestic goddess-like has ended in f-a-i-l-u-r-e. I like to think I am an excellent cook, but in this case, I think I will have to admit defeat.
Ah well- I had fun failing!