Friday Night Cookies

After a week full of writing a gazillion versions of story problems for Little about cookies on trays, it's finally Friday evening - aka time to make actual cookies in the au pair world. Here's a little insider advice if you ever find crazed 8-year-olds, sneaky German Shepherds, and two entirely different systems of measurement between you and warm, gooey cookies.

Heat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Oven is in Celsius. Do quick conversion on phone. Set as close as possible.

Melt 16 tablespoons butter.
No actual measuring spoons in this house. Butter label is marked in grams.
"Like this much?" "Errmm...Keep scooping, Little."

Cream butter with 1 cup white sugar and 1/2 cup brown sugar.
There are no measuring tools marked in cups. Grab a kiddie cup. Eyeball it.

Beat in 2 eggs.
Thank God for an objective measurement finally.

Add 2 teaspoons vanilla extract.
Okee dokee, 2 capfuls it is.

Add 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon baking powder, and 3 cups of flour.
Now we're just throwing ingredients in willy-nilly. This is entirely an intuitive process at this point.
Little: "Our cookies need more cauliflower!!!"

Instruct Little for the thousandth time to stop licking her fingers and sticking them back into the dough.
Immediately lick fingers clean while turning to grab something.
Decide that a little hypocrisy is one of the rights of adulthood when it gets you more cookie dough.

Add 3 cups chocolate chips.
Here's a measurement the whole world ignores anyway!
Finally some cultural carryover!
Remind Little again she really really cannot bite into a piece of chocolate and dip the other half into the dough, even though you're making a mental note to do exactly that in the future.

Start scooping cookies onto trays.
Try to contain the mess without leaving the dough balls unsupervised. Little seems to constantly have something in her mouth. Apparently now you're playing Red Light, Green Light with the dog because every time you turn back around he is noticeably closer to the table without ever having seemed to move.

Bake 9-11 minutes.
Pull out phone for a conversion before remembering minutes are still minutes.

Put first batch of cookies into oven.
Dog has reached table. He pretends not to speak English when you try to kick him out of the kitchen.

30 minutes later - dishes scrubbed, counters wiped, Little happily watching cartoons - decide you have thoroughly earned a pre-dinner cookie.

And just like magic, with cookie in hand, the dog is suddenly bilingual again.