How not to waste a batch of failed cookies

We all have that fail in baking from time to time. Sometimes it's overdone brownies that no one wants to eat. Or a cake that's way too dry. In our case, this time, the "fail" was intentional, a batch of intentionally "bad" cookies, for a class assignment.

One daughter had an assignment to make 50 "beautiful" things and 50 "ugly" things for one of her classes. She chose to make cookies. For the 50 "ugly" things, she burned some, made them misshapen, and some she sprinkled with black pepper.

This tin of cookies sat in our pantry for almost a month. I was concerned they might mold. To my surprise, no mold, just really hard cookies.

I set out to salvage what I could from them. I used a serrated knife to cut off the tops of each cookie.

Then I crushed them coarsely with a large spoon in a bowl. I added some melted butter, a sprinkling of sugar, and dumped the whole shebang into the bottom of a baking dish. (The sugar and butter are optional. I added then to conceal the off-putting flavor and texture of these cookies.)

After dealing with the cookies, I made a batch of scratch cornstarch pudding, butterscotch-flavored. While that was still hot, I poured it over the cookie crumbs.

After allowing to cool, I put the whole thing into the fridge to chill.

I wasn't going to try any, due to the milk thing, and my bad track record with milk. But my daughter raved about it. So, I had to have some, and then some more. Good thing I took a pill. Yeah, pudding, it's my one weakness.

Honestly, this is one of those homemade desserts that no one could guess was a concealed baking "fail". I've done this with brownies, topped with chocolate pudding, and cake topped with jam and vanilla pudding. I think of this as poor man's trifle.

An aside, about scratch pudding -- do you all have a good recipe for cornstarch pudding? Do you know how to turn plain pudding into butterscotch? For butterscotch pudding, use dark brown sugar in place of white sugar, skip the vanilla extract, and at the end, swirl in 1 tablespoon of butter.

When not doing the cheapest thing ends up still being the frugal thing

Time and energy are valuable assets to frugal living, that's a given. However, they come in limited supply for all of us.

Some days, my schedule is simply jam-packed with must-do's. Pushing something to a later date isn't always possible. On those days, a little money spent for convenience, will spare enough time to get it all done. But I don't want to go overboard on the spending for convenience items.

It's a simple question, really. How can I make my day work better by spending just a little money?

On Monday, I had just those circumstances. Too much to be done. Not much that I could push off to another day. And yet, a frugal meal still needed to be on the table for dinner.

I had leftover taco filling that was to become burrito filling, if I made a batch of home-made flour tortillas. Making tortillas is one of my least favorite kitchen chores. It's a work-out on my arms, and it makes a huge mess. Just didn't want to make them. Fortunately, commercial tortillas are also a frugal convenience. Spending just a little money on tortillas could buy me enough time to get the rest of my list for the day accomplished.

I was out picking up office supplies, so I grabbed a package of tortillas, spending $1.19 for 10. The cost to make those same tortillas at home is around 30 cents. So my net expense in buying convenience was 89 cents. I saved 30 minutes or more, plus my energy, by not making tortillas that day. It was the least expensive compromise I could make in an otherwise scratch meal. Yet it yielded the same or similar results -- tasty (and frugal) homemade burritos for the family.

So, sure, it would have been cheaper to make the tortillas myself. But spending that 89 cents, net, meant that I could get to all of my other work for the day, which I see as a big gain.