Can someone tell me why cookie recipes promise the mother lode but actually deliver a few tailings? It’s a cool, rainy spring day here so naturally it’s a cookie-baking day. The boy and I compared our available ingredients with several recipes and decided gingersnaps would be both aromatic and delicious. This particular recipe claims to produce six dozen cookies. I’m fairly good at my 12 times tables and know that means 72 cookies. I am the perpetual optimist but I’m not insane, so I knew we’d be lucky to get five dozen at best. And if you’re as good at your math as I am, you’ll know that equates to 60 cookies.

Now, I confess to a little dough munching despite the raw egg my mother always said will make me sick. But it was like, literally, half a cookie. And the boy got a little overeager with the teaspoon size on the first cookie but reined himself in on all future cookies. So tell me, why do the people who write recipes get our hopes up like this?

Forty-four cookies people. That’s it. That means we got a return of 44 out of 72 promised cookies. That’s 62% of what was promised. Recipe writer person, I give you a D. These will barely last me through the weekend.