I’m surprised to learn how much effort it takes to make good cookies. One of my selections on this website required a preparation time of two and a half hours. I’ve always just thrown ingredients into a mixing bowl.
The prep time doesn't make sense. 30 minutes in the refrigerator and 10-15 minutes in the oven are totally understandable, but none of the other steps would take 1.5 hours combined. Maybe the website just assigns a minute value to each task and adds them all up, which is not realistic.
Recipes written by experienced cooks often parallelize 2-3 tasks. For example, you can preheat the oven while boiling the pasta while you're making the sauce. This not only saves time but is actually essential to the recipe. If you try to execute all three tasks in serial, either the pasta or the sauce will be in a less than ideal condition.
