Chocolate Chip Cookie Disaster

On the 4th, my brother and sister-in-law are hosting their annual barbecue.  As I've done for the past couple years, I volunteered to bring chocolate chip cookies.  Yesterday, my afternoon opened up, so I decided to make them then.

The recipe I use is a variation of the Toll House recipe.  Besides a couple tweaks to the recipe, I do the pan cookie variation.  I have made these cookies for years.  I am an expert.

At least, I thought I was an expert.

I mixed the batter.  I preheated the oven in convection mode.  I lined the cookie sheets with parchment.  (I do a double batch, so I need two.)  I put the pans in the oven and set the timer for 20 minutes.

Everything was as I normally do it.

At the 20 minute mark, I removed the pans from the oven.  The tops were a bit darker than usual, but the cookies usually end up being too underdone in the middle, so this was good.  The edges were a bit...well...black, but I could easily cut that part off.  I set the pans aside to cool.

I went back to cut up the cookies (using a pizza cutter--the best tool for the job), and that's when I discovered the awful truth.

I picked up a large chunk of soon-to-be cookie bars, and I looked underneath.  Black.  All black.  Completely charcoal.

I think I screamed.

After examining the whole pan, I found that one side wasn't completely black.  About a quarter of that pan was salvageable.  And the other pan turned out to be okay.  It was dark, but not black.  I would say that that pan was on the over side of done, but edible.

It's a good thing that some of them turned out, because I was not about to make another batch.  I have time.  I just don't know if I want to go through that heartbreak again.  And I'm not in the mood to make another trip to the grocery store.