Ingredients out and mixer at the ready and there I was beating the egg whites. I think at this point I was still in denial. I refused to believe that a single recipe would have been enough, and honestly how many cookies could six measly egg whites truly make? It is equally important to mention at this time that I knew full well all of the cookies had to go in the oven at the same time. It is the nature of the recipe that the cookies go into a 350 degree oven, the oven gets turned off, and then they sit there all day or overnight, forgotten—hence the name, until they cool and harden. I have one normal size oven, and three cookie sheets.
But there I was, whisking away. Time for the sugar, the six cups of sugar. I have never made anything, anything with even three cups of sugar. (Go fill a bowl with six cups of sugar and imagine putting all of it into one batch of cookies.) Gradually it went in, and gradually the batter began taking on the consistency of glue. I folded in the chocolate chips and pecans, gave it one last stir and began scooping teaspoonfuls onto my three cookie sheets. As you might imagine I had more than enough for my one oven. In fact, it only held two cookie sheets. Anyone else at this point would maybe have considered dumping the rest in the trash. Not me. I grabbed the phone. My neighbors are getting rather used to these frantic calls. I suspect Mark keeps an extra sack of onions on hand for my weekly onion emergency. Eventually they will have my number blocked but until then, what are neighbors for if not to rescue me from my cooking catastrophes?
There I was at 8 a.m. on the Saturday before Christmas in my pajamas driving across the creek with a bowl full of what was quickly becoming the sweetest cement in the world, and two already filled trays of cookies. (I had resorted to using the top part of a broiling pan in the absence of another cookie sheet.) Neighbor number one’s oven was quickly at capacity, and lucky for me, neighbor number two also had an available oven. In the end, I had eight dozen cookies spread throughout three households.
