Recipe Gone Wrong...Disaster or Divine?

Somewhere along the way, I picked up a recipe card for a new kind of cookie, a maple-flavored sandwich sort of deal. The ingredients are all things I always have on hand and the instructions are simple enough, even though I hate chilling dough and using cookie cutters. I'm much too impatient! Still, I'll try anything with maple syrup in it once...

So, whip butter with 10x sugar. Easy. Yummy! Add a bit of salt and a bunch of maple syrup. REALLY YUMMY! Finish with some flour (otherwise, it's just crazy-good maple butter frosting). Roll into a ball, chill. *sigh* If I must...

Then the filling. Melt brown sugar with condensed milk until soft. Soft? Thankfully, a temperature is given, so I hooked on my thermometer and stirred madly to avoid scorching the sugar. At 240°, I cut the heat and added butter and maple syrup. First taste? Grainy. Very sweet. Not enough maple. Hrm.

[Read bedtime stories to kids, then scare wits out of Ross by hanging out on the stairs a minute until he tried to sneak into my room to watch TV]

Roll chilled dough out, use cookie cutter to make 2" circles. Riiiiiiight. Dough isn't very doughy. I look at the recipe again. "1-1/4 cups butter (2 sticks)" What? Which is it? Shame on me for ignoring the '2 sticks' bit...the extra 1/4 cup might have something to do with the toothpasty consistency. Still, with help from Chris, we get about six circles and six plops (I got frustrated with the circle thing) onto a greased cookie sheet and into the oven. Ten minutes later, it turns out my plops were equal to his circles - everything on the sheet has spread into a thin sheet of liquidy maple butter goo, burned at the edges. I consider the recipe again. Definitely too much butter. Next time, I'll go with just the two sticks and maybe a bit more flour so it gets more like shortbread. But hey - no eggs! The non-doughy dough hasn't got anything vile if eaten raw in it! And it is AWFULLY good off a spoon...why cook it? I have the rest (ok, the last little bit we figured we'd puke if we ate tonight) saved...we'll devour it bit by bit tomorrow, when we think the other isn't looking. :P