The Master Chef strikes back... with foreseeable results

In addition to my cooking ability, my baking skills have also been put to the test. M. and I had a bit of an argument in Pathmark (yes, that's why grocery shopping should really be delegated to domesticated robots if there are any) so to cheer me up, he suggested we buy Pillsbury cookie dough to bake chocolate chip cookies at home.

What could be more cheerful than the sweet smell of chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven? And thanks to the Pillsbury dough boy, what could be more easier? We kissed and made up and skipped along the cold aisles to find baking paper.

At home, I pre-heated the oven then placed a tray of five tiny round pieces of cookie dough on baking paper in the middle section. "Ten to fifteen minutes!" I read out in surprise the instructions for how long the cookies were meant to bake. We were slopping around the flat for about ten minutes, when M. said suddenly, "I think I smell something burning." So I went to the oven to see what was happening. The cookie dough had risen to form five perfectly round cookies, but I could see that the backs of the cookies had burnt. Two were edibly 'browned', but three were black.

"I don't understand it... I think the oven got too hot," I said to M. as I tried to scrape off the black bits, unsuccessfully as it turned out for the cookies were too soft to endure that sort of rough treatment. We tried to eat the burnt cookies from the top without eating the blackened, tough back.
"This is too painful for me to do again," M. said, staring at the remainder of his burnt cookie.
"Well, that's the way the cookie crumbles," he said, later, when the burnt bits crumbled away from his teeth which were biting into the soft bits.

I think I'm jinxing my food preparations.