The Miyoko (vegan butter) had come to room temperature for the cookies, but she’d forgotten and suddenly realized she had to do XYZ before leaving for the meet up with her friends and–oops.

I can bake them, I offered.

She texted me a recipe to squint at and, being so much my child, told me of the things she does just a bit differently. Triple the cinnamon. Double the vanilla. Use chocolate chips instead of raisins. One cup of flour, one and a half cups of oats, old-fashioned, not quick (did that). Half sugar, half brown sugar.

Then she ran to do that errand that had to be run.

Even embiggening it I had a hard time reading it and my phone kept turning itself off fast.

Every cookie recipe everywhere says one teaspoon of vanilla, so okay, I put two. And then found the recipe said a half? Who puts a half a teaspoon of vanilla in a batch of chocolate chip dough? Too late.

The Miyoko went squish when I tried to cut it. Much better to have a bit much than not enough if you’re not sure. Cold butter you can displace in water to check the measurement, but warm Miyoko? No. So let’s add maybe that’s a tablespoon but who can tell.

The big Costco brown sugar bag had never been opened but nevertheless was fairly dried out. I mostly filled the measuring cup from it and used a little white sugar to fill in any gaps–so much more flavor than plain white. Plus I wanted to squish as much as I could of the rest into my small OXO container for it and be able to securely tie off the rest of that bag.

It calls for baking soda and baking powder? Why do people do that to perfectly good cookies? (I actually went looking for the baking soda but I so dislike the taste of it that all I had is that five pound bag under the bathroom sink along with vinegar for clearing out drains and darn if I was going to pick that up to wreck a perfectly good batch of cookies. Double the baking powder it is–like the vanilla, it had only called for a half teaspoon of each in the first place.)

The second sheet of cookies came out of the oven just as she was walking in the door to get ready to walk back out the door.

She tasted one. She pulled a face.

Did you triple the cinnamon?

Oh! Dang. Sorry, no I didn’t.

Weak, she pronounced them. Needed more cinnamon.

But quadruple on the vanilla! They’re vanilla oatmeal chocolate chip cookies!

I did not tell on myself over it being almost all brown sugar. Some dire secrets are meant to be kept close.