...- LUcidLUcent: CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

I’ve been looking for the perfect choco chip cookies forever! When Skip was in playschool, one of his friend’s mum had baked heavenly choco chip cookies. They were firm and chewy with a hint of sea salt in them. I’ve had that recipe for over 3 years now and had still not baked it.

This is not that recipe. That recipe intimidates me because of the long list of ingredients even though I keep telling Bob that it’s often the many-ingredient recipe that turns out the simplest to make.

Skip wanted a worm shaped cookie

I have been addicted to watching cooking videos on Facebook and love the videos shared by Tasty. They look simple to make and most of them use few ingredients. Their choco chip cookie recipe looked interesting and I had brown sugar at home. (I rarely do).

I struck out the other two choco chip recipes from my recipe book. These were soooo good. These are crunchy and chewy. The texture of a cookie depends on how long the dough is refrigerated and the baking time. The longer the dough is refrigerated, the deeper the colour the cookie acquires and also has a more caramel-ly flavour. (I refrigerated it for 3 hours).

I have also said this earlier, stick to shorter baking time for cookies. Cookies harden upon cooling. So don’t wait for the cookie to harden while baking else you’ll end up with either burnt cookies or hard ones. The longer you bake, the crispier they turn.

CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES (MAKES 36 COOKIES)

Ingredients:

Granulated sugar – 100 gms (1/2 cup)

Brown sugar (packed) - 120 gms (3/4 cup)

Salt – 1 tsp

Unsalted Butter (melted) – 115 gms (1/2 cup)

Egg- 1

Refined Flour (Maida) – 155 gms (1 ¼ cup)

Baking Soda – 1/2 tsp

Vanilla Extract – 1 tsp

Chocolate chunks (chips) – about 220 gms.

Method:

1. In a large bowl, whisk together the sugars, salt and melted and cooled butter until a paste forms.

2. Whisk in the egg and vanilla, beating until light ribbons fall off the whisk.

3. Sift in the flour and baking soda, then fold the mixture with a spatula. (Do not over mix).

4. Fold in the chocolate chunks and then chill the dough for a minimum of 30 minutes.

5. Pre-heat the oven at 180C for 5 minutes. Roll the dough into walnut size balls and bake until the edges have started to barely brown (it took me about 10 minutes in my oven).

6. Cool completely before serving.

7. Done.

Recipe notes

· Do not forget the preheat the oven, even between baking two batches.

· Whilst a batch is being baked, let the dough remain in the fridge. When the dough is cold, the cookies are chewier.

· These cookies spread, so roll them into a small ball and then bake. Do not flatten them else they’ll further spread and burn.

· I added only a 100 gms of chocolate thinking 200 gms would be too much. But I realized it was too little when I was rolling the dough into balls.

· I have mentioned a reduced quantity of brown sugar as the original recipe makes the cookies a tad bit sweet.

· You may substitute the chunks of chocolate with choco chips.

Look what I found in the garden?