Sesame-Oat-Pecan Cookies - by Lisa

Oh man. I knew this would have to happen at some point. Baking FAIL. I do not know what on earth I did wrong here. Judging by the pictures in the cookbook, these cookies were supposed to look sort of like almond cookies. Mine? Well...a picture will do it far more justice than any attempt to explain.

That was batch #1 after baking for 10 min. I figured maybe the scoops were supposed to be bigger and did round two with less cookies and bigger dollops. And this time, I baked them for only 7-8 min. sigh

Yes, those are 6 cookies on a single sheet. Six enormous deflated sprawling cookies. I have no idea what went wrong. The oven was (supposedly) the correct temperature. I used the same pan I always use. I followed the directions to the letter. I've been baking with the same baking soda in other recipes without any problems. I have only 2 guesses as to what could have gone wrong:

1) The oven was actually hotter than it said it was. I had roasted some veggies for my little guy before starting this recipe, and I thought I gave the oven enough time to cool down. I even double checked it with an oven thermometer.

2) I had to heat my jug of honey in the microwave because it was crystallized. Maybe that affected how the batter behaved in the oven? I know melted butter can wreak havoc on cookies. Ug. So frustrating!

As for the actual recipe part, it was nice and easy. The one unusual item I needed was tahini. But luckily I already had it in the pantry for a future hummus making date. (Altho, thanks to the Vitamix, I can just use sesame seeds for making my hummus! But I digress...)  I processed the pecans, oats and other dry ingredients.

Then with the mixer, I beat the egg, honey, tahini, sugar and vanilla. It made quite the sticky batter!

Finally I scooped the batter onto my pan. They didn't hold their ball shape for long before spreading into little discs. I thought for sure these would puff up, but alas...

From what I can tell, they had an interesting flavor. I generally liked it well enough to keep snacking on it, but after awhile I noticed I didn't really care for the aftertaste. I really wonder what these would have tasted like if I could have gotten them to turn out like they were supposed to. I hope Summer's turn out well!