Scrumptious Chocolate Chip Cookies That Could Beat Your Grandmother’s Cooking: A Short Story
“Why don’t we just wait until mom gets back from the store?” Emery asked, staring at her father with her eyebrows raised. “I am positive that it will be easier if we wait for her to get back.”
Her father finished tying his apron around his waist and looked up with a smile. “Oh, Emery,” he said, with a look that Emery knew all too well. “What about the excitement of creativity? What about spontaneous combustion?” He paused and frowned. “No, not combustion…. Spontaneous– spontaneous–” He shrugged. “Anyway, I think if we go with what we’ve got now, it’ll be an experience you’ll never forget.”
Emery shook her head silently, thinking just how hopeless her father was. But then her fun side won out, and she pulled her apron over her head also. Hers, unlike her father’s, did not say Kiss the Cook in large black letters. Hers had a butterfly on the front, a gift for her ninth birthday.
“Well,” Emery looked at the recipe. Scrumptious Chocolate Chip Cookies that Could Beat Your Grandmother’s Cooking, was what it said in faded writing. “We need flour, brown sugar, eggs…” she read the list of ingredients, and was dismayed at the fact that they had everything except for baking soda and the most important ingredient: the chocolate chips.
The look on her father’s face was one to strike fear into any nine-year-old girl’s heart. Emery could tell by the expression, and the way he rubbed his hands together. He was going to experiment, and whatever he thought, she knew without a doubt that it really would end in spontaneous combustion.
“Alright,” said her father, and before Emery could beg him to stop he began to mix the ingredients together. He didn’t even bother to measure properly– the horror!
“Let’s see here… baking soda. Do we have baking soda, Emery?”
Emery, with wide eyes and a sinking heart, shook her head.
Her father shrugged. “Well, let’s see what we can use instead.” He opened the fridge and began to root around.
“Please, can’t we wait for mom?”
Her father seemed not to hear. “Aha! Look what I found, Emery… We are saved!” He victoriously held a bottle of root beer over his head. He leaned over the baking bowl, measured a few cups of the deep brown liquid into it, then began to stir.
By the time her mom walked into the room with a grocery bag, the cookies were nearly done. Emery sat on a stool, limp, and her father stood before the oven with an odd expression on his face.
“Um, honey,” mom asked, dropping the bag on the counter and kneeling by the oven also. “What is that smell?”
“Smell?” Emery’s father gave a tentative smile. “What smell?”
Her mother cocked an eyebrow. “Oh… I must have been mistaken. No smell at all, dear… no smell at all.” She began to put the food away, and Emery hopped off the stool to help her.
“Dad’s going to blow up the house,” she whispered to her mother as they were in the pantry. “He said something about spontaneous combustion. Maybe we should make a run for it.”
To Emery’s surprise, her mother laughed. “Let’s humor him tonight, alright? If the cookies are awful, he can eat them all.”
A grin crept onto Emery’s face, and she nodded with immense satisfaction. “Guess what he used for the chocolate?” she asked, peering at her father from the corner of her eyes. “He used coffee beans, mom. I think I’m going to be sick.”
Just then the oven beeped, and her father pulled open the oven door. “Mmmmm,” he said, obviously trying to ignore the awful smell that billowed into the room. “I think I’ll enjoy these!”
“Maybe if you enjoy soda and coffee beans and powdered garlic, all mixed with brown sugar and flour,” Emery said, holding her nose.
“Garlic?” asked dad, prodding a cookie with a toothpick. “I’m sure I didn’t put any garlic in here.”
“You thought it was almond flour,” Emery explained.
Her father looked up at her with a panicked expression, then looked back down at the cookie. Then to Emery’s horror and disgust, he took a bite.
The look on his face was priceless. He dined alone that night.
About The Author
Abby
Abby is a teenaged writer who loves using her words for Jesus, to seek and point out beauty in the ordinary. When she isn't writing, you can find her jamming on her guitar, which she fondly calls "Raymond Fender the First", sitting on porches, or reading.