Need a chef, or at least a half decent kitchen assistant

Today I suddenly decided, mid accounting and mid listings that I really fancied some cookies. But we don't have any in. So in an attempt to kill two birds with one stone (get cookies and clean kitchen) I decided to start baking.
Now I'm sure you all recall my secret cookie war. For some unknown reason I can make roast joints, bake cakes, serve rare delicacies and they are scrumptious, but try my hand at cookies, biscuits and brownies and it's a TOTAL fail.

Today I was SO hopeful.
The recipe was so basic that a child could do it, supposedly.
And I was comforted by other people's comments like;
"Hi Rachel, 
thank you so much for the recipe. i always thought cookie baking was the most complicated thing in the whole world. you made it soo easy, no baking powder and no eggs is the kind of cooking that we dig and now possible all because of you."
So I was pretty certain I couldn't mess up.

I was wrong.

I tell you now I FOLLOWED the RECIPE. I did honestly I did, it was so basic not even I could screw it up. But when I reached my 13-15 minutes cooking time.....they still weren't done. In fact a whole 45 minutes later they still weren't looking done either, they were squidgy still, so not being a quitter I flipped them over like pancakes and put them back in.

It's been an hour and they still don't look too great. I haven't tried one yet, and D's not around as a test subject so I keep poking them on the cooling rack and giving them dubious looks.

If anyone has a fool-proof (and trust me it needs to be fool-proof) recipe I can try leave it below. I'll try out every recipe I get and post all the results and who-ever can finally get me making a successful batch gets......um.....I don't know what, a trophy or something.
Help.