Eat Cheap, Eat Well, Eat Up!

Cookies flambe--not quite what I had in mind

Flambeed food is exciting. Cherries jubilee, bananas Foster, baked Alaska–if flames are dancing on it, I want it.

Usually. 

Cookies flambe weren’t what I had in mind when I decided to whip up a quick batch of chocolate chip cookies to take to a neighbor’s house for dinner. But that’s what I got.

Blame the oven mitts, which made it awkward to  a good grip on the hot cookie sheet. I watched the parchment paper of cookies start to slide back. “I’ve got it,” I thought. Nope. As if in slo-mo, the cookies slid toward the back of the oven…and onto the heat element, where the parchment paper provided kindling for an impressive show.

Rascal angled in the background while I figured out what to do with my flaming cookies. Hmmm. Let ‘em just burn out? Shut the oven and turn it on self-clean to hurry up the incineration? Ultimately, I turned off the oven, on the vent, put on my mitts back on, grabbed a pair of long-handled tongs, and set fished the incendiary treats out of the oven. 

Luckily, I had enough dough for another batch, which I’m happy to report made  in and out of the oven safely.