Where did my mom get these cookies?

We at A Book of Cookrye have not presented something... er... normal since the macaroni. So today, we (that's Marcus and myself) are going to briefly go into the world of relatively normal foods. No flowers in the lemonade, no kidneys in the pie, no wine in the breakfast porridge, no carrots in the cake. We're making... cookies!

This recipe came from one of Mom's cookbooks.

Because for some reason the camera really didn't want to photograph that legibly, here it is:

1 c butter ½ c sugar 2½ c flour 1 tsp almond or lemon extract _________________ Refrigerate for a few hours 300° 20

Now I know where I get writing only the ingredients and cooking time from.

I didn't know where this recipe came from, but I thought if Mom got it from somewhere and wrote it down, it must be good.

Also, I think I may have a guess why she doesn't make these all the time.

It is always vexatious when cookie dough is really crumbly. It is all the more tempting to eat it all at once and just let the oven stay cold.

The cookie dough was really tasty.

Anyvay, Marcus and I decided to make icebox cookies of it. This brought us to the most tedious part of the recipe: refrigerate for several hours. We looked at ugly Renaissance babies. We looked at drag queens attempting to use straws. We looked at Texans pooping on bluebonnets. Eventually, after 45 minutes, we gave up. Marcus was dead tired and for some reason had this thing called "work" to go to in the morning. The cookie dough sat for five days because either he had night shift or I did.

And that's what I call refrigerating for several hours.

Cookie dough sitting unbaked and uneaten for five days is sacrilege. Seriously, how can anyone voluntarily do that? It went all sad and dry.

Really crumbly.

Mom may have written 300° 20 minutes, but we weren't sure what Marcus' oven was set to at any time. Fortunately, he has an oven thermometer so we could look in at any time and tell that it was either nearly 400° or somewhere around 200°.

"Do they look done to you?"
"Eh..."

And so, we tried them.

I would just like to say I like how the bleach job on this shirt came out.

"It's shortbread. It's very dry."

Yes, they indeed were dry, which I think tends to happen when the cookie dough spends a fricken week in the fridge.

Fortunately, there was an easy fix.