I don't know if I'll be making these again...

Don't get me wrong! They were sinfully delicious, but that was about the only PRO in a gargantuan series of CONS.

But I'm getting ahead of myself! Let me start from the beginning.

Some of you may know that every Christmas my book club has a little tradition of making 8 little homemade Christmas gifts to pass around the table at our year-end dinner. It's fabulous! You get to make a few simple, cost-effective little gifts and in return, you get back SEVEN awesome homemade gifts from the girls sitting around the table. The whole idea is to be as creative, fun and frugal as you can, while completely dazzling your girls with your awesomeness.

This year I took home:
A cute little basil plant in a lace / bead decorated tin (from Maria)
A bottle of homnemade, eco-friendly detergent and desk calendar (from Vanessa)
A silver sequined bag (from Lorraine)
A jar of homemade mango cordial (from Gail)
A jar of cookie mix (from Kate)
And a jar of pickled chilies (from Terri)

Sacha sadly wasn't there this time, so there were 6 gifts instead of the usual, rocking seven! Still! As you can see, we were spoilt rotten.

For my contribution to the gifts story, I decided to bake some chocolate cookies and bung them into a pretty duck-egg-blue coffee mug for each of the girls. Lovely idea, but in my laziness to find a "quick and easy" recipe, I accidentally ended up spending way more than I should have and it took absolute ages to make. The recipe was alarmingly finicky for one that involved a ready-mixed box cake mix. *wtf*

I wanted to call them "Carmen's Kitchen Sink Cookies" seeing as there was a load of chocolate in them in various forms, but a quick Google search revealed that that name was already taken. So I made up something silly on the day, that I now simply can't remember. They turned out like Baby Elephant Turds, so maybe I should call them that? Or Angel Turds, seeing as they look revolting but taste like absolute heaven.
*quick google search*
Argh! Also not good.

Let's just call them "Carmen's Never-Again Cookies"



Preheat the oven to 350F.

Mix together:
1 box of chocolate cake mix
125g melted butter
1 large egg
1 cup white choc chips
1 cup brown choc chips
5 Snickers bars chopped into ±1cm cubes.

Using a 1TBSP scoop, place slightly flattened balls of the mix ±5cm apart on a baking tray lined with a silicone cookie sheet and bake for 15mins. Makes ±4 dozen.

And this is what you end up with:



A box of turds.
Fucking delicious, but expensive, time-consuming turds.
Not for me thanks. Pass.