Anyone who knows me, knows I'm not exactly a wizard in the kitchen. I love good food as much as the next person, I'd just rather it was the next person cooking instead of me. And usually, so would the people forced to eat the food. But even though I'm not a culinary tour de force, I love cutting out recipes that sound good.

About 13 years ago someone gave me a recipe that I still make. It's the recipe for Mrs. Fields' Chocolate Chip Cookies. And when done right, the cookies are to die for. When done incorrectly, they look like the congealed mess you see sitting on my baking pan to the left. That is actually what my batch of cookies looked like last week (ignore the pink polished toe at the bottom, I had to stand on my kitchen island to get the best angle). I had a meeting in Chicago and I came up with the brilliant idea to wow my client with my baking skills. Well, needless to say, I flew to Chicago empty handed. For some reason, about 65% of the time, this recipe comes out of the oven just like this - all drippy and thin and inedible (which doesn't mean my kids and I can't spoon the warm batter off the sheet and eat it, just that I can't bring them out in public).

Any bakers out there who can give me a reason for this? I'm thinking that for some reason when I measure, I'm not putting enough dry ingrediants into it (the recipe has both flour and oatmeal). It probably doesn't help that I have one measuring cup, and I'm not sure if it's a 1 cup cup or a 3/4 cup cup. You'd think I'd be able to tell, wouldn't you? In any case, today might be the day I go out and purchase a real set of measuring cups, lest I continue to waste package after package of chocolate chips. Not to mention the 17 sticks of butter.