When I was about 15 and in high school, I thought I wanted to be a baker when I grew up.  I started taking cooking classes in school and LOVED it. Cooking is so much fun and a great skill to have for life! One thing that I learned was that baking is a science.  Baking requires precise measurements of certain ingredients or it all goes to waste!  Sometimes it requires increasing or decreasing amounts of ingredients to obtain the perfect result.  I just want to share with you some of my baking fails to SAVE you the trouble of making them yourself.

I’ve been seeing on Pinterest, recipes for making cookies from cake mix, specifically I saw a recipe for 2 ingredient pumpkin cookies. First let me say that when I think cookies, I think soft and chewy cookies OR crunchy cookies. Second, after I started making this recipe I instantly remembered my recipe for pumpkin cake, which is so yummy by the way! You can find that recipe HERE.

The recipe is simple you need:

• 1-box of spice cake
• 1-15oz can of Pumpkin Puree (NOT pumpkin pie filling!)

— I tweaked the recipe a bit and added in 1-TBS of pumpkin pie spice and 1-TBS of nutmeg.  I will also tell you that I substituted the spice cake mix for yellow cake mix because I didn’t really think it would make a difference.  I will say that I’m not 100% certain that the recipe would have yielded different results had I used the spice cake mix.

1. Preheat your oven for 350 degrees.
2. Take your cake mix and pour it into a medium sized bowl.
3. Open your can of pumpkin puree and empty into bowl with cake mix.
4. Mix until batter is smooth.
5. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper, NOT FOIL!
6. Spoon your batter onto your parchment paper spacing about 2inches apart.

— At this point I made 2 different types. I pressed in some M&M’s into half of the cookies, and left the other half plain.

1. Bake for about 20minutes.
2. Remove from oven and let sit for about 5 minutes.
3. Transfer to wire cooling rack until cooled.

Your batter will be thick, but wet. It will NOT be a doughy consistency, so don’t expect that. I should have known this before I even put it in the oven, but I had faith that they would be yummy cookies!

The recipe I used recommended 15minutes before taking them out of the oven but when I opened the oven and pressed into one of the “cookies” they were still soft!  I decided to leave them in for another 5minutes.  When I took them out of the oven I was so disappointed! They were NOT what I expected! I broke one open and it was soft, cake like, and way too fluffy for cookies.  These ARE NOT COOKIES! We ALL know what a cookie’s texture and consistency tastes and feels like. These are “cake blobs” as my husband calls them. Not exactly cupcakes and not exactly cookies.   What a FAIL!  I had every intention of scrapping this post but then thought that all of you could also benefit from my “baking fail.”

They are STILL DELICIOUS none the less! They are a small bite sized version of my pumpkin bundt cake. The thing that I discovered is these “cake blobs” do not stick to the parchment paper so they are easy to eat and clean up! Just stick them in a ziplock bag. So much easier to share, eat and store than a whole cake!  My son loved making and eating these and surprisingly my nephews and brother-in-law enjoyed eating them more than the pumpkin cake I made!  I imagine these would also be great if used with my cinnamon glaze too.  If you try this recipe and figure out a way to fix it please let me know!