For The Disco Bakery’s very first Holiday Mix Cookie Box I was dead set that a crinkle cookie must be included. It’s like having a cookie-shaped brownie cookie that was a little crispy, a little gooey, and a totally different taste than a sweet sugar cookie. It would literally bring balance to the box.

I had made chocolate crinkles before and with great success, so long as they weren’t overbaked. I also love hazelnut + chocolate. So when I found a recipe for hazelnut chocolate crinkles I figured they would be even better than chocolate crinkles.

Oh but it went so wrong. Or at least I thought so. There may have been a few people out there who liked them. But probably not. I followed a recipe from one of my absolute favorite bakers, but then decided not to fill them with Nutella. Too much work for my first cookie box, I thought.

I had to scour stores for hazelnuts. Had I ever even had a hazelnut by itself? Probably. Maybe. Because wow, the bag I bought sucked. There is no nice way to put it. The expiration date was sometime in 2028. Deez nuts were not great.

Maybe it’s me… I’ll toast them! My taste has been weird since my second pregnancy. I figured that would help. Nope. Still off. I chopped them up, figured it must be me, and tentatively added them to the batter.

Nope. The first test batch was baked in my smaller oven, and lately the cookies are not coming out as expected from there, so initially I blamed the small oven. Isn’t it so lovely to just blame your machine? Oh that small oven only likes savories… RUDE! I didn’t like them at all. I didn’t like them warm, I didn’t like them cool. I baked them in my large oven. I pulled them out early. Better. Not great.

This story does not end with a revelation that I forgot baking powder or rushed the chilling step. The flavorless nuts didn’t make them worse, just added a weird texture. They weren’t brownie like and somehow they were way too sweet. I was bummed. I put Hazelnut Cocoa Crinkles proudly on my promo menu. Now what?

I made beautiful snowflake sugar cookies instead. I added extra of each cookie to each box. I did end up including a few hazelnut crinkles that crumpled (figuratively), in the event that someone out there did like them.

The moral of the story is, sometimes you bake something, follow all the steps, even the steps that said it was okay if you didn’t fill them with Nutella, even if you chilled them properly, baked them at the right temperature, tried them in both ovens… and it just doesn’t turn out right. Which sucks because—sigh—all that delicious Nutella wasted… but everyone out there is human.

And I am especially human because I am not trained as a baker in any professional sense. I didn’t go to French culinary school, I’m not a pastry chef—hell, I never even worked in a restaurant, fast food chain, or pizzeria. Sometimes your cookies will crumble and sometimes you will crumple your cookies—no, no you’ll toss your cookies—nope, you will make a different batch of cookies. It’s FINE!

Keep dancing, keep mixing.

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