Oh pshaw, on Fri 17 Nov 2006 01:06:08p, brickled meant to say...

> hello all,
>
> seems every time we make these, they want to burn on the edges, all the
> while the middle is uncooked and more times than not the entire cookie
> ends up "flattening" (appears the cookie is melting rather than cooking)
> out so far that it just turns out to be a gigantic mess in the pan. the
> end result is so far from what one would expect that it seems
> unfathomable that we actually followed the recipe.
>
> it's the recipe out of the much-hailed "better homes and gardens cook
> book" - we're following it EXACTLY as it is stated.
>
> it calls from 3/4 cups of butter - doesn't say butter or margarine so we
> used the real thing. for some reason we suspect the butter has something
> to do with it. the results were so bad i'm not sure it's accurate to
> blame any one ingrediant.
>
> please help - my kids are losing confidence in me

Assuming your measurements are correct and the oven temperature is
accurate, then it probably *is* the butter causing the symptoms you
describe. I would not want to try margarine, as there are so many
variations on it's composition today. I would suggest using half butter
and half vegetable shortening (Crisco), or even all whortening, in which
case you may want to try the butter-flavored version. Shortening reacts
quite differently in cookies than does butter.

--
Wayne Boatwright @¿@¬
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