How am I supposed to make cookies with a brick?

That's right, a brick. I'm talking about a brick of brown sugar, because it's so ridiculously dry here. Erik and I decided to make chocolate chip cookies this last weekend, and it was a bit difficult to get started.

Brown sugar is supposed to be delightful and fluffy. Here in Las Vegas, however, brown sugar has the tendency to dry out. We've encountered this problem at home by not keeping it in an airtight container before, but this time we ended up with a brick straight from the store.

Here is the initial brick:


The white marks are from Erik trying to bust it apart with a spoon:


We read that microwaving the brown sugar with a bowl of water next to it might help. Not so much...


This is where we gave up, went to a different store, and bought brown sugar of the proper consistency.