Baking disaster? Or Ice Cream delight?

I'm an amazing cook. I mean, I don't have the training for fine dining and stuff like that, but presented a cupboard full of seemingly mismatched ingredients, I can pull together something pretty damned awesome. It comes from my mother's father's side, the Fischers. In that family, recipes are considered taboo, you memorize anything that needs to be exact. The rest you eyeball and make up as you go.

Spring greens salad, spanish olives, shredded parmesean cheese with a lemon vinagrette and home made cinnamon crutons (yep, cinnamon). French bread baked with olive oil and fresh roasted garlic sprinkled over it while baking. Lime pepper chicken with steamed broccolini and depending on the mood either red potatoes with a butter sauce or carrot puree with spices. Dessert could be a rhubarb and cherry tart with ice cream. Yeah, that's actually a fairly easy dinner for me to pull together. I also love burgers/steaks on the fire, corn on the cob and other fixings. I do some awesome asian foods too. I rock.

But I can't bake to save my freakin' life. I shouldn't say that, I can bake. I've made some amazingly-tasty treats. Last year for Chrismas, I was in charge of making all the cookies for multiple parties. And several different varieties. I had just discovered SFR (thanks to Patrick HT Doyle) listened to hours and hours while cooking nearly 500 different cookies, bars, and dipping several pounds of pretzels in chocolate. Again, I rock.

But today my cookies were a disaster. The zuccini muffins weren't even that great, but I made a recipe that I personally don't like, since they were for someone else. Everything tasted amazing, that isn't the problem. But I just couldn't make the cookies not spread out. It was as if they had too much butter in them. They spread and melted on the pan instead of baking. When they were finally were done, they looked terrible. I had also made Ranger Cookies, a type I hadn't done before. I didn't use the coconut because I think it tastes like sunscreen, I subsituted wheat germ. Ah well. What doesn't look pretty makes a very yummy ice cream topping.