Chocolate Chip Cookies (Part 1) -- Bob's Red Mill

Yep, so here's attempt #1 at Chocolate Chip Cookies.
I absolutely love cookies, especially the chocolate chip ones, and miss them dearly. 
There are numerous cookie mixes out there.  I found this particular mix at Whole Foods and just could not resist.  Bob just looks so trusting with his white beard and old man glasses, right?  Although, I'm not a huge fan of his hat. 

Ingredients:
-1/2 cup butter
-1 egg
-2 Tbsp. water
Directions:
1.  Cream the butter with an electric mixer until soft.
2.  Add the egg and water to the butter and blend together for 30 seconds.
3.  Once the wet ingredients are thoroughly combined, add in the cookie mix and blend for 2 minutes.
(The directions note that the dough will look dry, but should combine when pressed together -- you can see what my dough looked like below).

Hm... not quite the chocolate chip cookie dough of my youth, but maybe it'll look better after it's baked?

4.  Shape dough into 1.5 inch balls and place on baking sheet.

My roommate was grossed out by the sand-like grainy texture of the dough, so I tried to shape them into little heart shaped cookies -- I hope that makes them taste better!  :)

5. Bake for 15 minutes at 350F or until the edges are brown.

Tada!  What happened to the hearts?

Initial assessment -- Not very good.
The positive:  Although the dough was very grainy, the baked cookies were not.  
The negative:  Not enough chocolate chips.  This is going to sound strange, but they tasted like very "adult" cookies... very "Bob" cookies... not too sweet or ooey gooey.  In addition, there was a strange after taste.  In all, it failed the roommate test (aka. my gluten-loving roommate would not eat more than one).

In all the initial cookies were a disappointment, but then my roommate looked up reviews online (thank you Amazon) and discovered how they could be better!

Ingredients (continued):
-cinnamon
-gluten-free chocolate chips (about 1/4 to 1/2 a bag)
-gluten-free vanilla extract
-gluten-free oats
Directions (continued):
3b. After preparing the base mix (above), add to it some cinnamon, gluten-free chocolate chips, gluten-free vanilla extract, and gluten-free oats

Okay, I'm not a cook or a baker, so I just threw in a bunch of stuff.  How could chocolate and vanilla not make something taste better?  I was a little skeptical about the cinnamon, but really liked the final product.

Okay, yeah, I know what you're thinking, it looks like a giant horse turd.  However, the oats really help to mask the strange texture of the dough.  Just be sure to get the gluten-free type!  

 

Tada!  Much, much better!

The modified cookies were much, much better and passed the roommate test. 
The extra chocolate made these cookies actually taste like chocolate chip cookies.  The oats hid the funny texture and the cinnamon masked the after taste.  :)!     

In the future, in addition to the other modifications, I think I'll add more butter -- Right out of the oven, these cookies were delicious, nice and firm out the outside with a little give in the center.  The day after, they were biscotti hard!  Like, leave these cookies in your coffee for half an hour hard.  Like, "OMG did this cookie just chip my tooth" hard.  Yeah, it's all still a work in progress.

A review of the Bob's Red Mill Cookies (without modification)
-Price: $5.00 - $6.00?  
-Convenience:  A simple box mix.  Butter, eggs, water -- nothing exotic here. 
-Taste:  Not very sweet or chocolatey with a strange after taste that I cannot place.
-Texture:  Not grainy.  Pretty nice fresh out of the oven, but overall too hard once they cool.

-Overall:  ^.^  ^.^ 
(2 out of 5 happy Asian smiles) -- I really did not care much for these cookies, but they were pretty good with the modifications.  I'll definitely keep working on it until I find a recipe that is just right!