Epic Cookie Fail

I stay at home now. I volunteer at school. I attend Mommy-and-Me playgroup once a week. I bake.

Well, kind of. 

A couple weeks ago, I received my first shipment and I was so excited to pull out all the kitchenware... we finally had cookie sheets! So off I went to the market to find vanilla and baking soda and flour, and all the other necessities to keep the house smelling fresh and the kids' tummy's full of yum-yum treats. And I did it! I made some of the best, chewy oatmeal chocolate chip cookies ever! I had found a recipe online, because God-forbid you find Tollhouse chips here with the recipe on the back. And while I had to do the metric conversions and I still didn't have measuring utensils, I did my best guess at the amounts needed for each of the ingredients.

Ta-da! They were fab! We took them to a friends' home for dinner and all six kids raved.

Fast-forward a couple weeks, and Cade has a party at school, so he asks me to make those same cookies for his classmates. Sure, I thought, I can rock these again! At conferences his teacher even mentions that they've been hearing all about these cookies for the past two days and the two classes are really looking forward to giving them a taste. Oh, the pressure!
So, off I go again to find the ingredients. First, you should know that in Shanghai, just because you find something somewhere the first time, doesn't mean it will be stocked again the next time you need it. And secondly, everything imported, especially baking goods, is oober-expensive here. So, I bought my $7.00 butter, and my $6.00 (SMALL) bag of choco chips. I found some eggs -- God only knows what animal they are from as the only English writing on the package says, "Farm Fresh" -- and I gave it another whirl.

Damn it.

Blame it on the baby waking mid-nap while I was baking, or my attempt to multi-task to also book flights, or my lack of measuring tools, or my over-mixing, or my poor conversion to grams, or whatever. They suck.

Serioulsy. What the hell is that? They are crunchy, not chewy. And they have flippin' holes in them! So, do I start over? Go buy something pre-made? Pray that the little 3rd graders still love them?

Ah, what an embarrassing mom moment, for sure.