So baked

My inept baking ways may be at an end. Yesterday I produced perfectly decent oatmeal cookies, the kind you might give a guest you like more than a little. They weren't great, but I can't expect magic. How did this come to pass? I used a recipe from the Baking Illustrated, which is made by the America's Test Kitchen people. The Powell's review points out that the recipes are great because the test kitchen adjusts each ingredient variable until the find the right mix. They also explain that if you add too much of x, y will happen which is cool. I liked this part of the book, but what was great for me was that it assumed you knew absolutely nothing about baking, nothing at all. So it tells you to let butter sit for an hour or two before creaming with sugar. In the past I would take it out of the fridge and get beating. No more. Little details like this corrected many of the little mistakes that added up to culinary disaster in the past. Before I talk too big I better try making something else.