60 Cookies, Two People and One Tiny Kitchen

I love cooking. I adore baking. But in our London flat, it is no easy challenge.

This past weekend the sun finally came out in London. Aaron and I went to the park to play catch, and we got quite a few stares... it's definitely not common to see baseball here! After a few hours, we headed home because I had volunteered to make cookies for my company's International Women's Day bake sale.

Problem #1: Using an American recipe.
Bigger is better in the US and my American recipe proved that. I just wanted to make a batch of cookies for the bake sale. The recipe I used said that it made 30 cookies but it ended up making 60 and I even froze some of the dough because I was so sick of making cookies!

Problem #2: Having American measurements with British ingredients.
Measurements and ingredients are pretty different between the two countries. The UK uses grams for measurements and Celsius or gas mark for oven temperatures. Baking soda is called bicarbonate of soda and there are no semi-sweet chocolate chips only tiny milk chocolate chips. Baking turned into a bad math problem that I was trying to solve... luckily, my math major husband was there to help : )

Problem #3: The size of our oven.
We shipped over all our new cookie sheets from the US only to find they don't fit in our oven! I also could only bake 8 cookies at a time so I had to bake 8 batches (8!!) before I finally gave up and froze the rest of the dough.

Problem #4: Aaron and I trying to cook dinner and bake cookies at the same time. 
I think this is a little self explanatory. We did this weird dance around each other while he tried to cook dinner on our stove and I put cookies in and out of the oven. I hope our neighbors were watching because I'm sure we put on a pretty good show!

We've cooked and baked in our kitchen before, so this post is just a little glimpse into our daily experience... it is always an adventure! And I think it's safe to say, that cooking and baking feels like much more of an accomplishment here... which makes the final product taste that much sweeter : )