Self control. Or lack of it.

Eventually I knew that I would give in to the siren call of the cookie dough in the chill cabinets not 50 yards from my bedroom window. It didn't help that I'd eaten half a Whoopie Cookie earlier in the day (for valid journalistic reasons, I assure you) and my bloody taste buds had got all excited about sugar after a month of near abstinence. Plus I'd been cycling around the city on errands for two hours and was properly hungry. So my reward was a supper of hot, melted chocolate, straight from the oven cookies. Mmmmm.

More embarrassing than giving in to cookies tho is the fact that I bought pre-made cookie dough full of additives and nasties, rather than making it myself. My excuse was simple: I don't have any store cupboard supplies and as I am leaving in a fortnight it seems silly to buy bags of flour & sugar.

I am always astonished at the serried rows of cake & cookie mix in the supermarkets over here. I think it's a cultural thing. In the late 1940s & early 1950s when America was being lured by advertisers into the world of pre-made & convenience food, the United Kingdom was still under Second World War rationing, (sugar rationing didn't end until the end of 1953), and that frugal mindset remained for a long time in British heads. Sure you can buy cake mix in England, but it's a tiny section in the supermarket, completely overshadowed by the raw ingredients section.

Certainly I have never in my life used a box mix to make anything, be it brownies, pancakes or plain old cake. When a batter is as simple as blending together flour, sugar, eggs and butter why on earth would I need some one to pre-mix that for me? Of course it helps that not only is my mother an extraordinary kitchen goddess, my godmother Rachie is a fearsome good cook too. She gifted me a mini cookery set with a rolling pin inches long when I was about five and I haven't stopped baking since.

Anyway, my cookie supper was damn good. And so it bloody well should have been: each raw round of cookie dough (see below) is 85 calories a pop. I ate six straight from the oven.

The proof:


The only question that remains is what on earth do I do with the rest of the package?