Cookie Comparison

Today I made monster cookies at home. Monster cookies are so good and my mom has perfected her recipe so that they are, well . . . perfect (the desired resulted of perfecting, I suppose). For some reason, I can never get my monster cookies in China to turn out as well. Chinese monster cookies taste ok, but they're missing that perfected quality. I was pondering this today as I was baking, wondering if I'll ever be able to isolate the correct variable in the Chinese cookie cooking equation. Here's a comparison (I wanted to make this a two column chart, but don't see that as an editing option in Blogger. Hmmm.)

American Monster Cookies

Large oven

Bake 15 cookies at once

Cookies correct distance from heating element

Reliable temperature gauge

Readily available chocolate chips

Spoonful of corn syrup (mom's secret ingredient . . . um, formerly secret ingredient after being posted on my blog)

Real butter

Eggs of equal size

Arm&Hammer Baking soda

Chinese Monster Cookies

Toaster oven

Bake 6 cookies at once

Cookies dangerously close to heating element (burned bottoms, gooey tops)

Unreliable temperature gauge in Celsius

Inability to purchase chocolate chips (must bring from home or chop up a Dove bar)

Directly translating "corn syrup" into Chinese gets me "corn juice" (a novel popular new drink at our Yichang supermarkets)

Butter of suspect origin and quality (says butter, looks and tastes like margarine)

Eggs of assorted sizes (probably all from chickens)

"Arm&Hammer" Baking soda purchased at the underground "scary market", probably well beyond its suggested shelf life