Below is the conclusion of my niece Andrea’s hilarious time at a friend’s house trying to make cookies. Click here to start at the beginning.
Finally, there her mom was pulling into the drive way. We ran up to her car.
“Did you get the flour?” Janelle asked eagerly.
“Yes,yes, I got it. Calm down mija,” her mom said, handing out the bag with the flour inside. We went inside and started getting everything else ready for the cookies. It was then we found out she only had this weird sugar…I don’t remember what kind it was but it was a little brown(not brown sugar) and the granules were bigger than regular sugar. “Oh well,” I thought, “this will have to do.”
We had everything out and ready to make them, but as we took the flour out of the grocery bag, we noticed something was a little off. I looked at the label more closely and there it was printed clearly across the front of the bag, Maiz. Her mom had bought tortilla flour! We were so distraught. The universe was against us baking these cookies for some reason. At this point I even considered just making them with the tortilla flour! I’m glad I didn’t. Not only would they have tasted terrible, but I would have definitely gotten an earful from my mother (who loves to bake by the way) when I got home.
We were just going to scratch the whole project, but her mom was really embarrassed and offered to take us to a Dollar Tree down the street to get some real flour. So we went and got flour, came back home, and finally got started making the cookies. Surprisingly, everything was going great. She had everything else, aside from regular sugar. We had just finished mixing the wet ingredients, and were ready to start adding the dry when I asked her where her measuring spoons were. She looked at me blankly.
“Umm…” she said as she started looking in every drawer in the kitchen. I stood there and rolled my eyes. I had thought too soon. There were no measuring spoons! She said that they did have some, but since her family had recently moved, the measuring spoons must have gotten lost. I sort of knew how to measure palm measurements, but not that well! That was what I had to do though, and just hoped for the best.
We got them in the oven, and they started smelling good. That made me feel better, but that feeling was short lived as I realized they were not spreading out and rising. For those of you who have never made Snickerdoodles, you roll them in a ball, roll the ball in cinnamon and sugar and when you put them in the oven, they spread out and rise a little.
Not these cookies! No. They stayed in their perfectly round ball shape as they baked in the oven. This was one of those palm-to-forehead moments. Everyone was there saying that they looked and smelled delicious, but those people had never seen snickerdoodles before. Janelle and I just looked at each other with raised eyebrows.
When they came out of the oven we both tried one first. They tasted nothing like Snickerdoodles. We were both very disappointed. All that, all day, just to get weird tasting cookies!
Then her brother came and wanted one. We thought it would be wise to warn him so we told him that they didn’t turn out quite like they were supposed to. He tried one and replied, “They taste fine to me.” We both snickered to ourselves at the fact that he liked them. To each his own, I thought. Then her sister and brother in law came to try some and got one to bring to her dad to try. They all liked them! Janelle and I just couldn’t hold it in any longer. We died laughing!
Later, we figured that we must have not liked them because we were expecting Snickerdoodles and they tasted nothing like Snickerdoodles. The fact that they liked them made us feel better though. They were gone in an hour! ^_^

The “weird” sugar was probably raw sugar of some kind. It would taste fine, but probably made the dough have a different consistency and thus not spread out. I’m not an expert on this. Lots of times when you have to make-do, you come up with something a little different but can just be thankful you have something edible. I always say as long as it doesn’t have anything inedible in it or completely ridiculous like garlic salt or chile in the cookies, they should be okay. You might even come up with a new recipe discovery. At this I can say I have been an expert since I have lived where you couldn’t get some of the most common ingredients. Great story!