Freshly Baked Cooks

Weekend in Review...part two of three

I left my friend in Incheon around 6 and made my way to Seoul to visit Jon and Krista. I pretty much invited myself, but with good friends you're allowed to do that.

I showed up and Krista was making a delicious chicken and pasta meal. We hung out, talked, ate and had some drinks. Then it was time to decide what the night had in store for us. It was either, go drinking or stay in and bake cookies. Yes, I said bake cookies... obviously cookies trumped the bar.

But Jana how can you bake cookies in Korea with no oven? Well, Jon and Krista just acquired a toaster oven (hard to come by here) and we figured that we could easily make cookies in it. Jon had picked up some cookie mix earlier in the day so we were off to a good start. Although, I had a hunch that they wouldn't turn out so I made sure to keep saying that these were Jon's cookies....no responsibility here. This is what the mix looked like at first... clearly something was wrong...

We all knew that something wasn't right. Jon took the approach to try and translate the directions on the back to see if we missed an ingredient (note: the picture had us adding an egg and some butter). I, not one for directions and obviously a pro baker, came up with the idea to add milk. I was convinced this would solve the problem and no one seemed to disagree. Adding milk worked somewhat, but now it was sticky... so they decided to add some oil on top of that.


Next step? Putting the cookies on the cookie sheet and in to the oven! After a few minutes we smell burning and discover the cookies burnt on the bottom and still 100% raw on top. Our only option was to flip them and press on... 

We are aware that you are not supposed to flip cookies... but we were out of options. We also forgot that toaster ovens get seemingly hotter than regular oven. Regardless, the cookies were disgusting anyways, even if properly cooked they would have been gross. I'm talking so gross the family dog would turn his nose up at them.

Next it was Krista's turn. She decided to make peanut butter cookies and found a super simple recipe online that called for sugar, peanut butter and an egg... I bet your mouth is watering already. They only had individual sugar packets...any guess on how many it took to get a cup of sugar?

...29... yup 29 packets. Barf.

These cookies were better from the start though, and we all had much more faith in them.. even if Jon didn't want to admit it. We turned the temp way down but still we couldn't escape burning the bottom of the cookies. If anyone knows how to make cookies in a toaster oven properly PLEASE let me know.

I don't think that I have laughed so hard since I have arrived in Korea. This was absolutely the funniest night. It may have helped that I was also drinking during this, and on a sugar high... but it was a great time... I'm sure that most people over here can't say that they have even attempted to bake cookies. I can honestly say that I'm glad that I have!