It was a run-away day, it was my turn to bring treats to a club meeting, and I wanted to bring something homemade rather than store-bought. I really wanted to bring my famous orange-cream drop cookies.

But back to the run-away day issue: I didn't have time to make a batch of drop cookies. Yet baking a batch of drop cookies was doable thanks to this super quick cookie making process I use when I'm running out of time. Here's what I did:

After preheating my oven, I lined my cookie sheet with foil and sprayed it well with PAM®. Then I whipped up a batch of my cookie dough, which took 5 minutes.

I placed the entire batch onto the well-oiled foil. With buttered fingers I spread the dough as evenly as I could across the foil to all corners of the baking sheet.

I baked the sheet of dough about 5 to 6 minutes longer than my recipe called for. In other words, a batch of these cookies is supposed to bake for 8 to 10 minutes. I baked the entire pan of dough for 15 minutes. The baking always takes a little experimenting, though--just be sure to watch it closely and test the "doneness" by inserting a toothpick into the center of the dough.

When it was baked through, I removed the pan to a cooling rack and I let it cool for about 10 minutes or so. Then I slid the foil from the cookie sheet to a cutting board and pulled the foil away from the baked cookie. With my large butcher knife I sliced the cookie into bars, first vertically length-wise, and then on the diagonal.

I let the cookie continue to cool while I got myself ready for my meeting. Just as I was ready to hustle out the door I arranged the cookies onto a pretty serving plate and off I went. The entire process took about 40 minutes max, as compared to the usual hour (plus cooling time) it takes to make batches of typical drop cookies.

And baking the dough this super quick way freed me up to do a couple other things at the same time. So if you're dealing with a run-away day, but would like to get some from-scratch cookies made, remember this tip. It saves time and energy!