How to Make Cookies Without Any Ingredients Or: My Life in China

Mostly, life in China is pretty interesting. Well, insane would be an apt way of putting it. However, sometimes life gets you down, as it is prone to do, and all you want are some cookies. But here in China, the local conception of “cookie” is very different from the one you are used to. They think of cookies as sweet, spongy things, more like very small quantities of bread. And you want the kind you are used to. Which means you can’t go to the bakeries. As for the expensive imports aisle in Carrefour, they only have things like Chips Ahoy. No. You don’t want those kinds of cookies. You want the kind you make yourself. What a fabulous idea, you find yourself thinking. I’ll go pick up the ingredients I need and bake myself some cookies. But wait. After more than a moment’s reflection, you see a problem arise. One big, glaring flaw to your brilliant plan: you don’t have an oven. In fact, the only ovens you’ve ever seen in China are in the bakeries. And in fact, you haven’t even seen them, but bakeries sell bread and other baked goods, so you infer that they must be there. Well, it’s not the end of the world, you tell yourself. For even though you’re craving the hot, freshly baked kind of cookie, you would settle for any cookie you could make with your own two hands. So this just means your recipe choices are somewhat limited – that is, you can only make no-bake cookies. Fortunately, there are plenty of no-bake cookie recipes to be had. Sit down at your computer and google “no-bake cookies” and you’ll find untold numbers of recipes, just waiting for you to un-bake them. Now hold on just one more minute. You’ve really got a problem now. Because once you start looking at the recipes, you realize you have no ingredients. For one thing, most of them call for vanilla extract, and your entire time in China, you haven’t even seen anything that remotely resembles vanilla extract. And what about butter or margarine? You’ve seen that in the imports aisle, but well, it’s about $4 for a single stick of butter, which is a little out of your budget. Come to think of it, you haven’t seen any powdered sugar either. A little disheartened, you head down to Carrefour to see what you can scrounge up. You find a jar of peanut butter, nice and cheap since it’s the store brand. Hurrah! One success down, several more to go. Right next to the peanut butter, you realize, to your amazement, that there is something that might be distantly related to powdered sugar. The bright, shiny label proudly declares, “Glucose Powder.” That’ll just have to do, you tell yourself. Margarine is out of the question, though. Too expensive. Wandering through the store, you stumble across some cheap oats. Perfect, you think, I’ll just add this to the mix. So now you have peanut butter, fake powdered sugar, and oatmeal. Something’s missing, you tell yourself. Ah! All of a sudden, you realize no cookie recipe is complete without chocolate chips. Hold it, hold it! There are no chocolate chips in China. In fact, you’re not even sure they believe in chocolate. Well, it’s just going to require a little more work than you anticipated. You buy a solid bar of dark chocolate (the best kind), and resort to chopping it up yourself. Now you’re actually ready to begin making your cookies! So here’s what you do, step by step. 1. Most importantly, find some clean dishes. This is rather difficult, as some of your roommates tend to hoard them in their rooms for weeks at a time. Or leave them in the sink for days on end, hoping upon hope that a different roommate will do their dirty work for them. 2. Upon locating clean dishes, scoop out an appropriate size of peanut butter into your nice, clean bowl. Add some knock-off powdered sugar to your knock-off peanut butter and mix it in. Continue until you get something that’s less sticky than peanut butter by itself, but still holds together. 3. Chop up an entire bar of chocolate and dump it in. Oh no, there’s too much chocolate! But what were you supposed to do? Chocolate is gold! You can’t waste a single sliver. Okay, fine, add some more peanut butter. 4. Add some oats. Mix. You’ll probably end up readjusting the peanut butter levels again. 5. Roll your fake peanut butter cookies into a ball and then roll them in some fake powdered sugar (which, as you suspected, is not actually powdered sugar as you conceive of it, but it will have to suffice). Put them on your nice, clean plate. This last step is very useful, as it prevents your cookies from sticking together. 6. Place them in the refrigerator (after shoving all your roommates’ foodstuffs out of the way, of course). 7. Share them with your American friends. They’ll love you forever.