Chocolate Chip Cookies

These little babies are meant to be the best chocolate chip cookies in the world according to the New York Times. Big call if you ask me. I noticed them when several bloggers were making them and decided they would be a good way to introduce a new little 9 year old who stays at our house occasionally to the kitchen.

They look good don't they? They were very but personally, the recipe took far too long (24-36 hours in the fridge) + my oven couldn't fit the cookies in one go for them to be the best ever plus I also like nuts in my chocolate cookies. Anyway, have a go, I don't know anyone who can say no to a chocolate chip cookie - yum!

2 cups minus 2 Tbsp. (240g) plain flour
1 2/3 cups (240g) bread flour
1 ¼ tsp. baking soda
1 ½ tsp. baking powder
1 ½ tsp. coarse salt,
2 ½ sticks (1 ¼ cups; 285g) unsalted butter, softened
1 ¼ cups (285g) light brown sugar
1 cup plus 2 Tbsp. (8225g) granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 ¼ pounds (570g) bittersweet chocolate chips or chunks, preferably about 60% cacao content
Sea salt, such as Maldon

Combine flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Whisk well; then set aside.

Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars until very light and fluffy, about 3 to 5 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Mix in the vanilla. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula as needed. Reduce the mixer speed to low; then add dry ingredients, and mix until just combined. (Unless you have a plastic guard that sits around the rim of the bowl, this will make a big mess at first, with flour flying everywhere. I found that carefully holding a dish towel around the top of the bowl helped a lot.) Add the chocolate chips, and mix briefly to incorporate. Press plastic wrap against the dough, and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. The dough may be used in batches, and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours.

When you’re ready to bake, preheat oven to 180°C. Remove the bowl of dough from the refrigerator, and allow it to soften slightly. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat.

Using a standard-size ice cream scoop – mine holds about 3 fluid ounces, or about 1/3 cup – scoop six mounds of dough onto the baking sheet, making sure to space them evenly. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt, and bake until golden brown but still soft, 15 to 20 minutes. Transfer the baking sheet to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then transfer the cookies onto the rack to cool a bit more.

Repeat with remaining dough.

Yield: About 24 (5-inch) cookies.

Sathya-rating ***

Easypeasy Coconut Macaroons

Here's something super easy, quick and tasty. Coconut macaroons. I never knew they were so easy. If I did I would probably be 20kgs heavier than I am now! My lovely sister Surya threw these together and we were shocked by how they came out. Perfect. A good last minute go to recipe.

1 can of condensed milk
450g shredded coconut

Mix all ingredients together.

Drop by teaspoonfuls onto generously greased baking sheets.

Bake at 180°C for 8 minutes.

Cool coconut macaroons slightly; remove to rack.

Sathya-rating ****

Crumiri (Italian Polenta Cookies)

There’s a few food websites I check regularly, one of which is Chocolate & Zucchini. I like it for Clotilde’s writing style and the recipes I don’t really see anywhere else. I haven’t made anything from this site until recently.

Crumiri are Italian cookies, and they’re made with cornmeal according the recipe, which I assume it Polenta. I hope I’m correct! Well, they worked with polenta anyway! They’re very easy to bring together and take a short time in the oven and produce gorgeous tasty corn type shortbread. Well worth the effort, thanks Clotide.

180 g unsalted butter, at room temperature
140 g sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 tsp pure vanilla extract, or 1/8 teaspoon seeds scraped from a real vanilla bean
240 g all-purpose flour
½ tsp salt
110 g polenta

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F) and line a baking sheet with baking paper.

Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well between each addition. Add the vanilla and mix again.

In a medium mixing bowl, combine the flour, salt, and polenta. Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture and mix until just combined. The dough will be thick.

Transfer the dough to a piping bag fitted with a 2-cm (3/4-inch) star-shaped nozzle, and pipe onto the prepared baking sheet to create the shape of your choice (such as a horseshoe, a stick, or a small "V", "S", or "O"). Make sure you keep the cookies small and give them a little room to expand.

If you don't own a piping bag or worse, if you own a shoddy one, plop rounded teaspoons of the dough onto the baking sheet.

Slip into the oven and bake for 12 to 16 minutes (depending on the size and shape of the cookies), until pale golden around the edges. Let stand on the baking sheet for 2 minutes then transfer to a rack to cool completely. The cookies will keep for about a week in an airtight container.

S

Mostaccioli

Something rather odd occurred yesterday. I was released from the office early. This is the type of news I don’t need to be told twice, so I scurried out the door and was home 2 hours earlier than usual. I decided to bake and found this wonderful recipe for chocolate cookies in my pile of “to do” recipes. Everyone who’s tasted them loves them and they weren’t difficult to make. I’d never done glazed cookies before, I think it’s a nice touch.

This recipe came from The Canadian Baker website, and called for walnuts, which I didn’t have, so I used hazelnuts instead, which worked great.

¼ cup butter
½ cup sugar
1 egg
1 ¼ cups plain flour
¼ cup cocoa powder
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp ground cloves
¼ tsp salt
1/3 cup milk
1 cup chocolate chips
1/3 cup chopped hazelnuts

Glaze
1 ¼ cups icing sugar
¼ cup brewed coffee
½ tsp vanilla

Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy and add the egg.

In another bowl, mix the flour, cocoa, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, cloves and salt.

Add this half of this dry mix to the butter mix with a little milk and beat well. Add the rest of the dry mix and milk and mix again.

Add the chocolate chips and hazelnuts and cover and pop into the fridge for 2 hours till firm.

After 2 hours preheat the oven to 180C and line your baking sheets with baking paper.

Roll 1 tbsp of the mixture into balls and place onto the tray an inch apart.

Bake for about 12 minutes (until tops begin to crack). If you used 2 trays, and remember swap the trays from top to bottom of the oven at the half way point.

Allow the cookies too completely before glazing.

For the glaze whisk together sugar, coffee and vanilla and drizzle 1 tablespoon on each cooled cookie and allow to set.
S

Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Another recipe taken from a fellow blog. I saw the name and I was sold. I decided to use large chunks of chocolate. You can buy Plastowie chocolate in a box that is already broken up. The pieces are quite large. The recipe I took this from appeared to use small chocolate chips but I thought, why not go the whole hog and make it really ooze and drip with chocolate... and my word they do!

Once again I am unable to say what they taste like due to this diet. Dang! But the boyf ate 4 in a row if thats anything to go by. Ive also sent a batch with him to his brother's house and I think I can safely assume the plate will come home licked clean...

I think these and a huge glass of cold milk would be slice of heaven...

1 cup butter, soft
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup (unsweetened) cocoa powder
2 cups dark or semisweet chocolate chunks

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then add the vanilla and mix until smooth.

In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, salt and cocoa powder. Working with the mixer on a low speed, gradually incorporate flour mixture into butter mixture until well combined and no streaks of flour remain.

Stir in chocolate chunks. Drop rounded tablespoons of dough (approx 1″ balls) onto trays lined with baking paper. Bake for 11 minutes at 180C, until set and just firm at the edges. Cookies should still appear moist. Allow to cool on the baking sheet for 4-5 minutes, then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

E.

Mrs Sigg's Snickerdoodles

I found this recipe on a fellow bloggers page, described as Quite Possibly the Best Cookies I Have Ever Made! and so they had me from hello...

I had never heard of Snickerdoodles, but since browsing other blogs, everyone seems to be making them! They must be very American..

So I made these lovely cookies and I found that they needed much longer than the 8-10 mins instructed in the recipe... Mine were still goop after 10 mins, so in the end they were in for almost half an hour.... Please enlighten me as to what I have done wrong if anyone can...

In the end they turned out fine.... I think..... They dont look anything like the Snickerdoodles on anyone elses blog, mine seem more rounded, less cracked and definately a darker colour cinnamon... And as I'm on this darn low carb diet, I am unable to try them. So I asked my boyfriend, my boss and my best mate in Queensland (sent her a little surprise package express post!). And the reviews were fantastic. Catherine used the word PERFECT! So I guess I'll be doing them again when I'm off this diet and seeing for myself...

1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup shortening
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons white sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C).

Cream together butter, shortening, 1 1/2 cups sugar, the eggs and the vanilla. Blend in the flour, cream of tartar, soda and salt. Shape dough by rounded spoonfuls into balls.

Mix the 2 tablespoons sugar and the cinnamon. Roll balls of dough in mixture. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets.

Bake 8 to 10 minutes, or until set but not too hard. Remove immediately from baking sheets.

E.

$250 Cookies

I received this recipe via email, as a lot of you did, I’m sure.

It’s a long winded story, but it’s a funny one, if it’s true. Basically, a die-hard Nieman-Marcus store lover had these cookies in their café in Dallas. She was told the recipe was available to buy for ‘two fifty –a great deal’. So this person bought it and turns out the recipe cost two-hundred and fifty dollars so they circulated the recipe as revenge.

Baking isn’t really my forte, although I do enjoy it and always give it a go. Cookies, however, are different. They intimidate me. I honestly don’t think I’ve made cookies since I was a teenager, so 10 years at least.

But this recipe convinced me for some reason, and oh my lordy, were they worth it! My nick-name at the office is now Ms Fields, I gave a box to some friends and they scoffed them all in about 15 minutes and Tony’s workmates also raved that it’s my best contribution so far.
So here you go. This is the recipe I was emailed, but I halved it and made 50 large-ish cookies. You could probably even halve it again, however, I got rid of 50, very, very easily!

1 cup butter

340g chocolate chips

2 cups flour

1 cup brown sugar

1 tsp Bicarb soda

½ tsp salt

1 cup sugar

250g Cadbury chocolate, grated

2 ½ cups oatmeal, blended

2 eggs

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup chopped pecans (optional)

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius (375F).

Blend the oatmeal in a blender to a fine powder.

Cream the butter and both sugars. Add eggs and vanilla.

Add the flour, oatmeal, salt, baking powder, and bicarb and mix thoroughly.

Add chocolate chips, grated chocolate (I used the blender to grate the chocolate) and nuts.

Roll into similar size balls, and place two inches apart on a baking tray.

Bake for 10 minutes and allow to cool on trays for a few minutes and serve.

S