When things don't go as planned

An alternative title for this post could be "This is Why You Do Not Bake On Wax Paper".

Now that everyone sees where this one's going, let's dive right in.

So this past week, I decided that a quick and simple dessert would be cake mix cookies. Cake mix. Rolled in sugar. Baked. 

Sounds easy. 

Too easy. (Well, for me. For any other person on the planet, right now they would be reading this shaking their heads enjoying a delicious cake mix cookie. I know how it is.)

Wow...so many of my ingredients are already in this pale yellow pile! This is great!

I should point out now that I was making lemon cake mix cookies. I'm sure they could be made in any cake mix flavor, but I've really only seen them in lemon and chocolate. 

Maybe the chocolate mix would not have betrayed me so. 

So. I really did read the instructions of the recipe (and it got so many rave reviews that I really can't put any blame on anyone but myself). And I began to roll out the cookies into little yellow ever-so-slightly-lemon-scented orbs. 

And the dough began to ever-so-slightly glue itself to my hands. My now yellow and lemon-scented hands. 

Spiky sticky cookies

I then got the idea (uh oh) to dampen my hands in between cookies. Which did help, as the cookies turned out smoother and my hands were less glued to every surface within 4 feet. 

Brilliance at work

So my plan (a Kitchenphobe, a plan, Panama?) was to form all of the cookies, then roll them in the sugar. When I tried lifting the cookies off of the sheet, well, even I had predicted what was going to happen.

Sticky cookie residue

I persevered, maintaining a "let's see what happens" attitude. 

Okay, looking better...

Oh boy, that looks like a mess. 

This pan looks like even more of a mess, because I had gotten frustrated with putting cookies in rows at this point. "They're baking where I put them, damn it!"

Okay STOP. Imagine the sound of screeching brakes here. Or, more accurately, imagine the sound of a smoke alarm here. Or, you don't even have to imagine it. This is what happened, oh, about 12 seconds after I put the cookies into the oven, and persisted throughout the entire baking process, irregardless of magazine waving, window opening, and flat-out ignoring by/near/of it. 

(Wow, how messed up was that last sentence?) 

Why, oh why, did this happen? Please refer back to the alternative title of this post. Oh, you don't have to refer back, I won't make you do that. "This is Why You Do Not Bake On Wax Paper".

Why don't you bake on wax paper, my friends? 

Because this happens. 

Typing mmm or yum would be such a lie right now. 

Yeah.

Gross, right?

Oh and the whole house began to smell like lemon plastic. My mom asked if they could be known as Lysol cookies. 

Do you guys have disinfecting powers?

As you can probably tell, I didn't even let the cookies bake all the way. The smoke alarm was beeping. I had declared the cookies a disaster. 

At least I didn't have to wait for them to cool to store them properly

I think if I had been baking for an actual occasion, I would have probably been more upset over my un-servable cookies. I chose to look at it as a learning experience. 

And what was the moral of this story?

Don't use materials that can melt as a surface for preparing food (particularly where heat is involved).