Necessity is a Mother, all right!

We were at the vacation house last week. One of the neighbors has been ill and was doing poorly. Our vivacious 9 year-old guest decided we should take cookies to Mr. N.  We laid out all ingredients. We started the process -- while I creamed the sugar and butter, Little Miss did the eggs and vanilla. I opened the flour to measure and the smell hit me like a hammer. It was rancid. Nasty rancid. I should have kept it in the fridge, but for some insane reason did not. It had probably been in the plastic 'keeper' for a year in all kinds of temps between 50 and 80 degrees and did not age well.

Panic set in. It was 8 pm and the nearest grocery store was an hour's drive.  I did not want to put all progress in the fridge and start again tomorrow. Borrowing the flour from the person who will receive the gift is rather bad form. What to do????

Strangely, on the previous trip I brought some Quaker flour tortilla 'mix' and actually remembered to put IT in the fridge. I yanked it out and read. Mercifully it contained everything we needed but hadn't already added to the mix! It worked perfectly and the cookies were great. The neighbors loved them!

In case you have a bunch of flour tortilla mix hunting for a purpose, try chocolate chip cookies. Follow the normal recipe until you get to the dry ingredients (minus sugar), then substitute the same amount of flour tortilla mix for the salt, leavening and flour. 

Next, I think we'll make oatmeal raisin tortilla cookies!