The Day I Made Cookies for the Wendy’s Eating Husband
Dr. Archer makes cookies with lots of sugar and cow butter (gasp)
In all my 10 years of marriage to the Wendy’s Eating Husband, I have never made him a batch of homemade cookies. I only feel a little bit bad about that. The kind of cookies that the Wendy’s Eating Husband wants and the kind of cookies I’m willing to make are two very different things.
This past Christmas, I got the itch to make him homemade chocolate chip cookies. I can still hear his words in my head:
“It would be a Christmas miracle if you made me some chocolate chip cookies.”
Of course, he was thinking of the Nestle Toll House chocolate chip cookies. I was thinking of a healthified gluten free and egg free version with ground flax seeds.
I had good intentions to get these bad boys made for Christmas. I was going to let myself be very generous with the [coconut] sugar. I stocked up on Kerrygold butter from Costco and several bags of chocolate chips. But in December, I wasn’t feeling very well and had been struggling with some fatigue, so the Kerrygold butter got pushed to the back of the fridge and half of our chocolate chip stash got eaten by the morning rodents. And by morning rodents, I mean my children who get into things before I wake up in the morning.
My next chance to bring forth a cookie miracle was for the Wendy’s Eating Husband’s birthday, which happens to fall two days after mine.
I was willing to put as much butter and sugar in these cookies as needed. That says a lot, doesn’t it?! AS MUCH SUGAR AS YOU WANT. DUMP IT IN! But I was not willing to fatally poison my kitchen with gluten. I also wasn’t willing to use eggs. The girls and I are very allergic to eggs, and I wanted them to be able to enjoy the “normal person” cookies too, so eggs were just not going in these cookies.
Yesterday morning, I texted my sister for her favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, telling her that I was making chocolate chip cookies for the Wendy’s Eating Husband’s birthday. “They are going to be egg free and gluten free tho,” I informed her. Sister piped back, “Make him real ones!” That was her way of telling me to follow the Nestle Toll House Milk Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe she texted to me, gluten and all.
I compared the Toll House recipe to the Betty Crocker’s Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe. They are ALMOST identical, except for the difference of an egg and a half teaspoon of salt. And then I made my… substitutions.
Let’s just say that I’m very inexperienced in the field of baking with cow butter and sugar. I used coconut sugar, which to many is more acceptable than white granulated sugar, but I consider it all the same. Sugar is sugar, booger. You can get yo’ minerals in a trace mineral supplement anyways (if that’s your justification for why one should be eating coconut sugar instead of white granulated sugar).
So, how did they turn out? Let’s find out from the Wendy’s Eating Husband:
“I don’t like them. At all.”
“I wish you would have followed a recipe.”
“Please don’t ever make these again. Save your troubles.”
“Here’s my tip for making them better: Use a recipe and make the gluten ones. With eggs.”
Before you think the Wendy’s Eating Husband is a jerk, let me share a little background with you. In college, I made these quinoa brownies that were sweetened with stevia and baby food sweet potatoes (eating archerfriendly goes way back!). I had brought a pan of them over to the Wendy’s Eating Boyfriend’s house (he was the boyfriend then). His roommates said that the brownies looked like the cracked, desolate soil of hell. One of them dared to try one, and after eating it, he got down on the floor, licked the carpet, and said that the carpet tasted better than my brownies (hii Zach).
I’m not emotionally attached to my food. But at the same time, if the Wendy’s Eating Husband wants some chocolate chip cookies, I’m unwilling to make ones with gluten and eggs. We are at a stage now where the kids want to eat what he is eating, and the kids especially do not do well with eggs. Maybe I am too controlling (use of the word “maybe” probably isn’t necessary). Gluten and eggs are where I draw the line. Besides, the ND of all NDs told the Wendy’s Eating Husband that he’s not really supposed to be eating gluten. And I kind of need to feel okay about making cookies for the Wendy’s Eating Husband, especially if we’re going to be putting normal person amounts of sugar in them. The Wendy’s Eating Husband doesn’t need to be egg free, but the rest of us do.
What made these cookies so horrific? Too much molasses. See, both Toll Hilly and Betty called for 3/4 cup of white sugar and 3/4 cup of brown sugar. Since I was only using coconut sugar, I decided to use molasses to help with that brown sugar taste. But I used wayyy too much molasses. A whole 1/4 cup of it, which made the dough runnier in the oven, hence the cookies turning out flat and crispy. Whoops.
Speaking of flat cookies, when I had previously asked what kind of chocolate chip cookies the Wendy’s Eating Husband liked, he said “not the flat ones”, so these cookies have done a very good job at meeting none of his favorite cookie criteria.
If I had to rename these cookies, I’d call them Dark Brown Molasses Buckwheat Cookies with Chocolate Chips. They are certainly not chocolate chip cookies.
Enjoy More Archerfriendliness
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Pragati
April 26th, 2017 at 9:45 am
This made me laugh so hard! At least you had the best intentions!
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May
April 26th, 2017 at 2:14 pm
Haha love this post! I feel like I have these moments with Daniel – I am gluten/dairy free (and more things now that I have been diagnosed with SIBO – TMI?) I need to try more of your recipes!
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Lori
April 26th, 2017 at 3:37 pm
This is really hilarious!!!
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Alex
April 27th, 2017 at 4:02 pm
I remember those brownies you made in college. Their infamy lives to this day!
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Monica
September 24th, 2023 at 7:37 pm
I loved your story. I think we have a lot in common when it comes to carefulness with what we feed our kids. Mine are grown now, but when they were young, I would occasionally make sucanat sweetened desserts, using half or less of what the recipe called for. Once when at my sisters house, we made vegan (for my sake) peanut butter cookies together (that was before I was gluten free). Her husband had no clue what I had convinced her to do, so when he took his first bite he complained loudly to her of how bland the cookies were. Lol, he was quiet as soon as he was informed it was my idea to cut the sugar in half. 😂
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