Sure there were skeptics. Sure there were the non-believers. There were those who said it couldn’t be done. But we didn’t do it for them. We did it for us, for our integrity, for our manhood. Tyler and I made cookies and we did it as men. It started several nights ago when the ice cream ran dry, and we longed for the taste of sweetness but there was none to be found. So we set our minds on cookies. I went down to the computer room and printed out what the Internet said was the biggest, moistest, chocolate chip cookies ever. Unfortunately we didn’t get to test the claims of sizableness or moisturasity due to the fact that it was snowing lions and wolves, which caused the power to go out and our gas oven to cease working. We tossed around the idea of putting the cookie dough into a pan and placing it atop the fire to try to bake them but it got too late and we were forced to retire to our quarters having only snow covered in peanut butter to ease our cravings. We waited patiently bundled in our layers waiting for the opportunity when we could prove wrong the room full of women who had mocked our cookie baking ambitions, and that day came shortly after. We pounced on the opportunity when a chance came for the men to once again take hold of the kitchen. Tyler began rounding up supplies and cleaning the kitchen while I returned again to print the Internet’s best. I searched the web for the recipe that would produce those sizable cookies but I couldn’t find it anywhere. This frustrated me and I was forced to settle with the best chocolate chip cookie recipe. But this still wouldn’t produce the large cookie goodness we wanted, so I did what any logical sugar deprived 17-year-old male would do. I quadrupled the recipe. I returned with a recipe that called for 7 ½ cups of flour and 5 cups of chocolate chips and this is when the real mudslinging began from the women. They thought we didn’t have what it took to make chocolate chip cookies. They thought that just having a Y chromosome somehow diminished our culinary skills. We ignored the insults thrust our way and began “creaming” the butter with the sugar. The butter was as hard as a rock so we baked it for a few minutes and after a little melting and some burned hands we agreed we wouldn’t use that approach next time. Now that our giant block of butter was soft I added the sugar and Tyler took his potato masher and started “creaming.” I took the reins and started instructing how to go about the next step in the procedure following the recipe exactly. Some might say my demeanor was “controlling” or “bossy,” but it had to be done to keep kitchen order. We added five eggs and dissolved some baking powder in hot water, which sounds unconventional, but it worked. We got our flour, vanilla, chocolate chips and walnuts all in and whipped out the largest baking pan I’ve ever seen. After putting the cookies in the oven at 350 we put on our favorite Kid Cudi and got to work baking. We baked for maybe two hours only stopping to eat dinner and by the end we were almost sick from dough. The last pan was ready to go in and it looked like it could get filled but instead of making yet another pan of regular cookies I devoted half the pan to one beast. It took 20 minutes to cook this one and while it was in the oven Tyler and I assembled a great pyramid of cookies with the big one going on top. The cookies were golden brown and tasted amazing. After the daunting task of baking had been defeated we sat there for a minute and stared at the tower of cookies and thought: If we men could bake better than anyone ever thought possible, what else could we do? Did we have limits? I don’t think there is really anything women can master that men can’t replicate. Who knows, maybe the next piece will be about our adventures breast-feeding.
-Forrest Blair
