Last night, I came home from dinner and drinks with friends and decided I wanted a cookie.  I’ve been baking a lot recently as you have to do something when you’re unemployed and your self esteem craves validation, which it then gets in the form of your friends giving you a muffled “mmmmm” as they eat pumpkin bread with chocolate chips while you stare at them as they chew.

While I’ve cooked for myself regularly for a while now, baking is new, and with cooking you can sort of wing it, but I’ve always been under the impression that baking is precise.  I figured I probably had most of the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies, and as I realized I only had one egg in the fridge, I decided to look up a vegan cookie recipe. It called for an egg substitute the equivalent to one egg, so I was golden. I also only had half the amount of chocolate chips I needed, but I had some walnuts.  And then the recipe called for both brown sugar and regular sugar, and I only had the latter.  I forged ahead since I had organic cane sugar which is a little darker than white sugar, and I also decided I would add an extra 1/4 teaspoon vanilla to give the cookies more depth.  Does adding an extra 1/4 teaspoon vanilla give chocolate chip cookies more depth?  I have no fucking idea, but boy did I feel smug.

And then…

When I went to get the teaspoon out of my kitchen drawer, I sliced my finger open on a citrus zester.  Badass, right?

Now, I’ve had this zester for about a year, but I’ve never used it until recently when I was making a blackberry compote for vegan chocolate cake.  The compote was too sweet, so I zested some lemon rind in to balance the flavors (that is actually badass).  The zester had a protective plastic case, which I assumed was just store packaging and threw away.  Of course, what does every high school math teacher say about making an assumption?  That you’ll slice your finger on the most unused kitchen appliance in your arsenal.  Since the flour and butter were already out and in bowls, I forged ahead, one handed.  The dough seemed a little dry, so I did added some Canola Oil to the recipe, thus allowing my smugness as a baker extraordinaire to return, even if my finger didn’t stop bleeding for a good twenty minutes, and I had to crush walnuts with only my left hand, which is one of the lesser known Zen Koans. 

Since I had played around with the ingredients, I made sure to test the dough first, and as I would have inhaled it whilst stoned in high school, I threw those bad boys in the oven and googled “Do I need stitches?”

I didn’t need stitches (verdict still out on whether I could have used a stitch, however) and my finger hurts like hell, but the cookies were amazing.