Do you remember the Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pies?  Now think about your favorite sugar cookie?  What if you, with no experience in baking, decided to combine these two wonderful things?   Tonight I did just that, mostly because in the process of making sugar cookies I realized I didn’t have enough flour, but I had oatmeal.  Oh man if you combined the two…disaster.  At least in my case.  The culprit, amino acids.  Not just any amino acids:

The protein is a single polypeptide chain, consisting of 201 amino acid residues with M(r) 23,252.8. The N-terminal amino acid residue of the protein is blocked with 5-oxoproline (pyroglutamic acid). All eight cysteine residues in avenin-3 are involved in disulphide bonds. (Egorov, Musolyamov, Andersen, & Roepstorff, 1994)

Baking is a science, literally.  The proteins found in my flour, when mixed with the proteins (amino acid bad boys) in my oatmeal, made for dry, lifeless cookies.  I’m assuming this is why we have recipes, so that no man or woman should have to to suffer what I have suffered, gooeynessless (I know it’s not a word) cookies.  Next time this craving strikes, I’ll simply call Carol.

Egorov, TA., Musolyamov, AK., Andersen, JS., & Roepstorff, P. (1994). The Complete amino acid sequence and disulphide bond arrangement of oat alcohol-soluble avenin-3. European Journal of Biochemistry, 2(224), Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7925380