Momofuku Milk Bar compost cookies

This is a story about failure and success. It's also about cookies. And kind of about family.

I'll start with the part about family. This weekend I finally set aside some time to bake cookies to mail to my brother and two cousins, who are freshman in college (the cousins, not the brother). I will probably never forget how excited I was the first time I got non-university and non-parent mail at my dorm. It was a card from my aunt with a gift card and it 150% made my day.

Usually, my brother and his girlfriend get monster cookies, so those were definitely on the list. But, I have been wanting to try this recipe since Jake and I had the real Momofuku compost cookies at Milk Bar a couple of years ago.

I used the recipe on Amateur Gourmet but I got a little carried away with the mix ins. I probably ended up with at least double what he recommends for baking ingredients and snack mix-ins.
 

Now, we get to the part about failure. Below, please marvel at my giant failure. This, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens when you get all excited about getting to add potato chips and M&Ms and Milk Duds to your cookies. You accidentally forget to add THE DRY INGREDIENTS. Key stuff, like the flour, and the baking soda and baking powder.  But, we scraped this scary stuff off the sheet and ate it anyway. It was kind of like cookie/candy/snack-brittle.

Back to the good stuff: success! and cookies! My cookies aren't quite as puffy as AG's are in the original recipe. But, I also used margarine instead of butter and, like I said, at least double his amounts for mix ins. Oh -- and the flour and leavening ingredients were added AFTER the fact.

But these cookies were very, very delicious. They were the first to go today at the office, between the bag of compost cookies and the bag of monster cookies. If I were to do it again, I would not use caramel candy melts or Milk Duds. The caramel really melts down at 400 degrees and you get weird caramel blobs sticking out of the edges of your cookies, which you later have to snap off so that the cookies are somewhat uniform for packing.

And, here they are. Three care packages, heading all over the country (Washington state, Colorado Springs, and Staten Island) for three college boys, whom I love and want to share baked goods with.

The moral of the story is this: it's important to love your family, and cook/bake them tasty things. It's also SUPER important to read the damn recipe and following the freaking directions.

Monster cookies recipe to follow....