A small batch of lovely cookies

It is nearly April, which if you live in the US means you're finally getting around to filing taxes. I don't know about you, but all of this adulthood business made me want some fricken cookies. Some people constructively work through their frustrations and vexations; I eat them.
However, being on a momentary diet upswing, I did not wish to have two dozen divine cookies making the kitchen smell divine. Does the internet have a solution? Heck yes it does! It took like 5 seconds to find what was claimed to be a single person's single portion of cookies.
But first, let us now behold what turned up in the clearance bin!

Fifty glorious percents off!

I didn't realize I wanted peanut butter chip cookies until the chips were half off. And so, we will get over our tax vexations with...

Three Big Chocolate Chip Cookies 3 tbsp brown sugar 2 tbsp butter 1 tsp baking powder 1 egg yolk ¼ c flour ⅓ c chocolate chips Heat oven to 350°. (A toaster oven will be big enough.) Grease a sheet pan.* Cream the butter and brown sugar. Stir in the baking powder, mixing thoroughly. Then beat in the egg yolk. Stir in the flour, and when all is mixed add the chips. Divide the batter into thirds, and drop each portion onto the pan. Bake until browned on the edges and done, which will be faster than you think- about 10-15 minutes. They go from baked to burnt quickly, so keep a close eye on them when they start to look nearly done. *I recommend using foil because then you don't have to think about washing the pan. Note: This originally was a recipe for oatmeal cookies which is good also. Just add ¼ cup each of oatmeal and chocolate chips at the end (if you desire, replace the chocolate chips with raisins- though apparently raisins cause some people to have paroxysms of raisin-induced rage). Adapted from this recipe for small-batch oatmeal cookies

It may be all well and good to control one's portions instead of permanently sacrificing all that is delicious in the name of one's clothes size, but it feels so odd to be making an entire batch of cookies in such a tiny bowl.

I've never perpetrated a bowl of cookie dough so miniature. Like, you don't get out a wooden spoon or even a measuring cup. Well, you could, but it's hard to stir such a tiny thing with a big spoon without splattering it everywhere.

This doesn't even use a whole egg. Have you ever seen a recipe so tiny you had to throw out half the egg? Or, in my case, be so irked at the idea of waste that you put the egg white in the freezer and swore you would find a recipe for it at some point?

Ordinarily, I might add chocolate chips. But as aforementioned, today the peanut butter chips were gloriously on sale!

Although once again, we have an unrelentingly single-color batch of cookies.

It's worth noting that these are a lot bigger than any other cookies I've ever made. The original recipe said to make three plops of cookie dough, but that made for some really big cookies.

All right, this recipe claimed to be a not a single batch of cookies but a single portion of them. And true, we only made three. But these things are huge- at least as big as the ones they have at gas station counters. You know, the ones that look so tempting you start to assess whether you can divert $2 of your gas money toward dessert. Each of these cookies nearly covers my whole hand.

That said, these are three really delicious cookies. And as weird as it is to be making such a teeny little batch of cookies where you measure out all your ingredients with a tiny spoon, this opens up so many new ideas. You could have fresh cookies whenever you wanted them without having pans and batches of extras taking over your counters and freezer. You can diddle with the recipe and try all sorts of weird ideas, calm in the knowledge that however dreadful your strange ideas turn out (barbecue sauce cookies, anyone?), you didn't waste very much in the name of experimentation.