Most challenging moment: The first batch of cookies spreading all over the cookie sheet
Lessons learnt: To trust my instincts - read on to find out what I mean.
-------------------------------
I never realised how difficult it is to combine baking and blogging! How do people do it so frequently? I am truly impressed!! I have been baking but I have totally neglected blogging about it - as is obvious from the lack of posts on this blog. In fact the only reason I have forced myself into doing this post is because three people (of the five who follow this blog very kindly) noticed my long absence. This is not good and I will try harder to be committed to blogging.
I have tried three or four recipes from the book in the last few weeks. The first of these - double chocolate cookies - is what I am going to write about today.
Indulge me for a few minutes while I tell you that I adore chocolate chips cookies. The standard recipe I have used for many years comes off the back of the Hershey's choc chip package and is frankly, too amazing for words. The most important aspect of a chocolate chip cookie is 'chewiness' - is that actually a word? Choc chips cookies have to be baked for 8-10 minutes max so that they are soft in the centre and very very slightly firm around the edges. If you bake them for too long, they will become crispy, and crispiness is a VERY undesirable trait in a choc chip cookie. That's probably one of the reasons I cannot stand those terribly crispy disks of cocoa and substandard chips that pass off for chocolate chip cookies in Pakistan.
When making a choc chip cookie, it it really important to have good chocolate chips. The choices are limited in Pakistan but whatever you do, do not buy a the generic ones. The will either lose their shape while baking and melt, or they will just taste awful. I always use Hershey's; these are obviously not top of the line but it's the best that's available. They are on the pricey side - 295 rupees for a 340 gram bag - but they are certainly worth it. I try to have two bags of the semi-sweet variety (you can also buy Hershey's milk chocolate chips but they are a lot sweeter) in the fridge at all times. Once you start using them you realise that they are incredibly versatile and there is no end to what you can do with them. But in case I ever run out of ideas, I have chocolate chip cookbook that I can refer to. (If you want a peak inside the book, check it out here - if you want to buy it, it's available at Liberty Books.
Coming back to the recipe though, I decided to try the double choc chip cookies because a) they looked terribly decadent; b) I had a friend who was feeling a bit down and really needed a serious dose of decadence; and c) they looked very easy to make!
Keeping those three very good reasons in mind, I took 200 grams of melted chocolate (I weighed out and melted the semi-sweet choc chips) and mixed it together with butter, flour, vanilla essence, baking powder and eggs. Then I added a further 100 grams of semi sweet choc chips in solid form. While I was doing all this it occurred to me that the recipe had a great deal of liquid content and not enough flour. This continued to bother me throughout the process but I decided to ignore it thinking that the low flour content just meant that this was going to be a super chewy cookie.
When I put the first batch of cookies on the cookie sheet, I could only fit in four because they spread out all over the pan and looked dangerously close to merging together to form one giant cookie. I decided to bake these as is and even though they came out of the oven as four cookies (surprise, surprise), they were hideously out of shape and I had to scrape them off the sheet.
What a wonderful thing it is that cookies are baked in batches! So I simply added another half cup of flour to the batter and tried again and this time they turned out perfectly. And while I was disappointed that the recipe was not written correctly, I was glad that I was able to salvage it and make two dozen very decent sized cookies from the batter.
This is not a great picture of these cookies because my resident photographer (my brother) was not available but it is the best I could do. But they were soft, they were chewy and they were oh so fudgey... just thinking about them makes me want more.
I gave a dozen of these cookies to my friend, MA, who loved them so much, he has been asking me to bake more for him ever since. As for the other dozen... well they sort of disappeared at home :)
Indulge me for a few minutes while I tell you that I adore chocolate chips cookies. The standard recipe I have used for many years comes off the back of the Hershey's choc chip package and is frankly, too amazing for words. The most important aspect of a chocolate chip cookie is 'chewiness' - is that actually a word? Choc chips cookies have to be baked for 8-10 minutes max so that they are soft in the centre and very very slightly firm around the edges. If you bake them for too long, they will become crispy, and crispiness is a VERY undesirable trait in a choc chip cookie. That's probably one of the reasons I cannot stand those terribly crispy disks of cocoa and substandard chips that pass off for chocolate chip cookies in Pakistan.
Coming back to the recipe though, I decided to try the double choc chip cookies because a) they looked terribly decadent; b) I had a friend who was feeling a bit down and really needed a serious dose of decadence; and c) they looked very easy to make!
Keeping those three very good reasons in mind, I took 200 grams of melted chocolate (I weighed out and melted the semi-sweet choc chips) and mixed it together with butter, flour, vanilla essence, baking powder and eggs. Then I added a further 100 grams of semi sweet choc chips in solid form. While I was doing all this it occurred to me that the recipe had a great deal of liquid content and not enough flour. This continued to bother me throughout the process but I decided to ignore it thinking that the low flour content just meant that this was going to be a super chewy cookie.
When I put the first batch of cookies on the cookie sheet, I could only fit in four because they spread out all over the pan and looked dangerously close to merging together to form one giant cookie. I decided to bake these as is and even though they came out of the oven as four cookies (surprise, surprise), they were hideously out of shape and I had to scrape them off the sheet.
What a wonderful thing it is that cookies are baked in batches! So I simply added another half cup of flour to the batter and tried again and this time they turned out perfectly. And while I was disappointed that the recipe was not written correctly, I was glad that I was able to salvage it and make two dozen very decent sized cookies from the batter.This is not a great picture of these cookies because my resident photographer (my brother) was not available but it is the best I could do. But they were soft, they were chewy and they were oh so fudgey... just thinking about them makes me want more.
I gave a dozen of these cookies to my friend, MA, who loved them so much, he has been asking me to bake more for him ever since. As for the other dozen... well they sort of disappeared at home :)
No comments:
Post a Comment