Vent: I was packing brown sugar like concrete for 2 years
I made the same oatmeal cookie recipe from the back of a King Arthur bag every month for 2 years and they always came out flat and hard as rocks. Last week my neighbor Margie watched me scoop brown sugar and mash it into the cup with my thumb, and she grabbed the bag and showed me the sugar was supposed to stay fluffy, so I had been adding almost double what the recipe wanted this whole time. How do you all measure brown sugar without turning it into a brick?
Man, I feel this in my soul. I did the exact same thing with a banana bread recipe for like a year, wondering why it was always so dense and dry, and it turned out I was packing the brown sugar down like I was trying to fit it in a suitcase. My aunt finally caught me doing it and just about lost her mind. The trick she showed me is to scoop it loose with a spoon and barely tap the cup, then level it off with a knife. Or you can just weigh it if you have a scale, which takes all the guesswork out. Two years of rock cookies is rough, but hey, at least you know now right?