Why bachelors and baking don't mix

For my cooking of the week I actually decided to try baking -- chocolate cookies with a cherry in the center, covered in chocolate frosting. Now I can make a mean peanut butter cookie with the help of Betty Crocker, so cookies aren't too far out of the realm of possibility for me. I planned on making a bunch yesterday and taking them into work to impress everyone with my ability to make tasty morsels.

Alas, it was not to be.

Upon reflection, I believe this was for two main reasons:

1) I like big cookies; like, the-size-of-my-head cookies. And so I have a tendency to put too much dough into each cookie. This totally screws up the cooking time, which cascades into a bunch of other problems (some parts get burnt, other parts don't get cooked enough, etc.). From now on, I will try to practice restraint when it comes to cookie size and adhere to the recipe.

2) For the frosting, the recipe called for 1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate pieces. Well, at the grocery store, the chocolate came in chips and squares, but not pieces. I opted for the chocolate baking squares, but those are measured in ounces. Each square is an ounce. Well, 8 ounces make 1 cup, right? Well, yes, if you're talking about liquid and not a ginormous amount of chocolate. So I put the whole 8 oz. bar of chocolate in there and that was just way too much. Consequently, it never got to frosting consistency; it was more like an amorphous blob of chocolate that kept trying to climb out of the pan so it could begin to devour all of Norfolk.
So next time: chocolate chips.

The cookies were technically edible, but they sure as heck didn't look that appetizing. And even though people in my line of work are notorious for eating anything set out at the office, I certainly wasn't going to bring them to my co-workers as the first impression of my cooking skills.

Maybe I should try something easier -- like learning to juggle flaming swords while riding a unicycle.

I'm sure I could do that.