Vanilla Bean Chocolate Chunk Cookies

 

Why yes this is another chocolate chip cookie recipe.  There have been a few of late haven't there?  But I like them and I like trying out new recipes for them because there are so many out there!  Besides, these were to take in to share with a group during a project meeting and I figured most people would like this sort of cookie.  And if not then I could happily eat them myself.

The original recipe looked very tempting, especially as it used vanilla bean paste.  However, I don't have any of that. What I do have though, is 9 vanilla beans, so I thought I'd make use of one of those instead.  Then decided to add just a smidgen of extract too, just for an extra boost.  It worked out lovely.  I also used chunks instead of chips because that is all the local shop had but that was for the best.  There was so much chocolately goodness in each cookie as a result.  The only other thing I changed was the cooking time.  I kept them in just a bit longer than the original because I prefer some crunch to my biscuits.  They still had a slightly soft middle but not too much.

They were amazing cookies!  So so yummy.  Quite a good size and the amount of chunks in them was great.  Plus, since there was no chilling, they were made and baked rather quick (or as quick as I can go with one tray of 6 in the oven at a time).  Everyone who had one really liked them.  I will say though, I thought they tasted better the day after they were made.  They had firmed up just a little more by then and it was really hard not to keep eating them.  I had to be really restrained around my group.  Not so much after I got the leftovers home!

Recipe - adapted from The Domestic Rebel
Makes about 30

• 340g/12oz plain flour
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 2 tsp cornflour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 170g/6oz butter
• 125g/4.5oz light brown sugar
• 45g/1.5oz granulated sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 vanilla bean
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 200g/7oz milk chocolate chunks

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4 and line baking trays with greaseproof paper.
2. Mix the flour, salt, bicarbonate of soda and cornflour together in a medium bowl and set aside.
3. Beat the granulated and brown sugars together with the butter in a large bowl until smooth and creamy.
4. Remove the seeds from the vanilla bean and add to the sugar butter along with the egg and the vanilla extract.  Beat until well mixed.
5. Add the flour gradually, beating in after each addition.
6. Stir in the chocolate chunks.
7. Roll heaped tablespoons of the mixture into balls and place on the trays spaced 5cm/2inches apart.  Flatten slightly.
8. Bake for about 10-15 minutes or until the edges of the cookies are starting to turn golden brown.  Rotate halfway through to ensure even baking.
9. Allow to rest on the trays for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies

So Christmas has come and gone.  It was a good one.  I got some fabulous things, including a number of new additions for my kitchen (which I now need to find space for) and some photo editing software that I have been coveting for a while.  There was also great food and lots of rushing about visiting people.  Admittedly I did end up feeling a bit homesick.  It's been three years since I was home for Christmas.  It is one of the downsides to living so far away with erratic circumstances: planning anything is nearly impossible.  But maybe I'll get to go down next year.

Anyway, since me being at university means there is only one source of income at the moment, plus the fact that we are planning and paying for a wedding next year, funds are a bit low.  There was money for buying presents for immediate family but extended family that we would be seeing on Christmas and Boxing Day, not so much.  But I love giving presents to people so I decided I would make the presents!  Or bake as the case actually is.  So December 23rd and 24th were spent baking over 200 biscuits!  I've never made so many before.  It was exhausting but worth it!  The majority were my favourite chocolate dipped orange shortbread (cut into stars), which were for the grandparents, aunts, uncles and older cousins.  The younger cousins got chewy chocolate chip cookies.  I didn't think either of those would suit the last giftee though, since he is only 3.  So I made something new just for him: banana chocolate chip cookies.

Unfortunately, I cannot provide his verdict on the cookies.  However, the fiancé got to eat the spares and he says they are very banana-ry and there's lots of chocolate chips to compliment it.  They're also slightly crunchy.  Yum yum!

Recipe - adapted from Biscuit via Baking Heaven volume 2

Makes about 24

• 100g/3.5oz butter
• 100g/3.5oz golden caster sugar
• 100g/3.5oz banana (about 1 banana)
• 200g/7oz plain flour
• 100g/3.5oz milk chocolate chips

1. Mash the banana in a large bowl with a fork.
2. Add the butter and sugar and beat together until smooth and creamy.  If it starts to curdle, add a spoonful of the flour.
3. Add the remaining flour and the chocolate chips to the mixture.  Beat together until a soft, sticky dough forms.
4. Form dough into a rough ball and wrap in clingfilm.  Chill in the fridge for 2-3 hours.
5. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4 and line 2 baking trays with greaseproof paper.
6. Shape the dough into balls about the size of a walnut, place on the trays spaced about 3cm/1.5inches apart and then flatten them with a wet fork.
7. Bake for about 15-20 minutes or until the edges of the biscuits are golden brown.  The centres will still be a little soft.
8. Allow to rest on the trays for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling. 

Cookie in Cookie Cookies

Oooooh, I've only been on placement for one day, after a lovely two week holiday, and am already exhausted!  And it's not like I've even started teaching yet!  This is an observation week with some group work thrown in.  The real hard work doesn't start until next week!  I do not know how I will cope.

Anyway, I knew it was going to be a lot of work so I made the most of my holiday and did practically nothing school related.  The fiancé and I did get the registrar booked for my wedding, and talk to hotel about the menu for the wedding breakfast.  We also took some pictures so we can get save the date cards made up and sent out (though that's still in process) and spent an entire week playing lots of Pokémon.  And then last Saturday I took a merry jaunt up to Perth to have lunch and go shopping with my best friend Jess!  Yay!

So, as has become the tradition, I baked her something.  Cookies!  Cookie within cookie cookies!  They are part chocolate chip cookie and part chocolate sugar cookie.  They are of the soft variety of cookie and ever so delicious.

The chocolate chip cookie part is adapted from one of my previous cookie recipes.  I swapped out the icing sugar for golden caster sugar and upped the amount of vanilla used.  The chocolate sugar cookies come from Smitten Kitchen, and are a very popular recipe indeed as they have cropped up on many a food blog.  It's not hard to see why though.  It is a fabulous recipe.  I did substitute in golden caster sugar for the brown sugar and due to only having large UK eggs (which are bigger than large US) meant my dough probably ended up stickier than it should have been, despite me adding a little extra flour.  However, they still turned out really well.  I did make sure to alter the recipe in the write-up to specify a medium egg though.

I was really pleased with the final result.  They looked rather cool and they are very, very yummy!  Jess definitely seems to like them, which is obviously the best thing for me to hear because I made them especially for her. 

Recipe - makes about 30

Chocolate Chip Cookie:

• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tbsp water
• 75g/2.5oz butter
• 45g/1.5oz golden caster sugar
• 155g/5.5oz plain flour
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• Pinch of salt
• 60g/2oz chocolate chips

1. Mix the egg yolk, vanilla extract and water together in a jug.
2. In a large bowl, blend together the sugar and butter until it is pale and fluffy.
3. Add the egg mixture to the sugar butter a little at a time, mixing in after each addition.
4. Sift in the flour, salt and baking powder, add the chocolate chips and stir together until just incorporated.  You should end up with a somewhat soft and sticky dough.
5. Roll into a ball, wrap in clingfilm and chill in the fridge for at least an hour (mine was in there for about 6 hours).

Chocolate Cookie - adapted from Smitten Kitchen:

• 115g/4oz butter
• 155g/5.5oz golden caster sugar
• 1 medium egg
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 30g/1oz cocoa powder
• 185g/6.5oz plain flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp baking powder

1. Mix the butter, sugar, vanilla extract and cocoa powder together in a bowl until well combined.
2. In a separate bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.
3. Add the flour to the batter a little at a time and beat in until you end up with a smooth and sticky dough.
4. Wrap in clingfilm and chill in the fridge for at least an hour (this one was also chilled for 6 hours when I did it).

Assembly:

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4 and line 2-3 baking trays with greaseproof paper.
2. Lightly flour a clean surface and rolling pin. 
3. Remove one of the doughs from the fridge and roll it out to 1cm/0.25inch thick and cut out circles using a 5.5cm/2inch.  Wrap leftover dough back in the clingfilm and put back in the fridge.
4. Remove the other dough and repeat step 3.
5. Now use a 4cm/1.5inch cutter to cut circles out of the centre of each of the bigger circles.  Now you should have a set of rings and a set of circles in both types of dough.
6. Press the centres of one dough inside the rings of the other dough, and vice versa.
7. Place on prepared baking trays, spaced about 2.5cm/1inch apart as they do puff out.
8. Repeat steps 3 to 7 until all the dough is used.
9. Bake for 10-11 minutes, until the edges are firm but the centres are still soft.
10. Remove from the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Today was the last day of school at Markinch Primary.  It was therefore also my last day working there since I'm going back to university at the end of the summer holidays to study for my PGDE in Primary Education so I can be a teacher myself!  Feeling like you're making progress in your life is quite satisfying really.  Anyway, before I got official supply work there at the start of June I was just a volunteer classroom assistant and spent pretty much all my time there between January and June with P1b, who are a completely lovely bunch of children and I adore them (the two horrors included).  So I wanted to make them an end of year present, even though I'd not been working in their class for the last month, and I settled on chocolate chip cookies since they are easy to make in bulk and were more likely to be enjoyed by everyone.  I was determined to make fairly large ones though, because they would only be getting one each, and ideally a chewy one because as much as I like crunchy biscuits, I think chocolate chip cookies are delicious when they are soft.  Plus it'd be easy on the kids' teeth.

The other two cookie recipes I have made previously produce small and firmer cookies, rather than chewy.  Of course, I've learnt since the last time I attempted (and failed) to make chewy cookies that the chewiness comes from undercooking them slightly.  I still went looking for a different recipe from my other ones though, because I wanted one that produced bigger cookies.  However, I sort of ended up with something I could almost call my own but is heavily influenced by Baker Bettie.  Now she has lots of cookie recipes on her site (and I really want to try out her recipe for World's Best Chocolate Chip Cookies at some point to see if they live up to their title) but the one I ended up working with was one for making cookies from just five ingredients.  What I liked about it was that you could use any variation on the ingredients: so whatever flour and sugar and egg and butter you had on hand.  This was a fantastic base point because it meant I could work with what I had or what I knew produced yummy results and this would be my guide for ratios.  

My cookies didn't end up with only five ingredients though.  Mine have seven, since I used two types of sugar (and three in my second batch since I didn't have quite as much brown sugar as I thought and had to make up the rest with muscavado) and I added some vanilla because I like putting vanilla in biscuits.  Since I was making slightly bigger cookies than the original recipe I was very weary with spacing on the trays and started with four, one in each corner, so I could see how much they spread.  This also meant I had to monitor the first batch in terms of cooking time since they would need a bit longer than the original 7-9 minutes.  Turns out only a couple of minutes extra were needed.  And it took me a couple of tries to get the amount in the scoops right to get evenly sized cookies but I got into the swing of it eventually.  I made two batches of the cookies, since there were 25 in the class.

These cookies are delicious!  Lovely and chewy and there were so many chocolate chips that they were amazing!  I was so pleased.  I decided to dress them up for the kids and made little presentation envelopes from greaseproof paper, with homemade labels that say 'you're one smart cookie!' on them.  The end result was really quite cute, if I say so myself.  The kids were all super excited when I handed them out so yay!  I don't know if they liked them since they got them just as they were leaving.  Hopefully they will.  I know I did and I'm picky, as you know.

And I got presents too!  Which was a lovely surprise.  I got a huge bunch of flowers, which is now sitting on my dinner table, and a book full of photos of the kids doing various things across the time I've been there (and a few of me taken on the rare occasion I was not in charge of the camera) as well as individual drawings and messages from each one.  It's so lovely!  There's also spare pages at the back which I've decided I can stick all the pictures they given me over the last few months onto.  Plus the fiancé's Mum (who is their teacher) says she's got photos of me baking with them (we did bread and cake pops) which she didn't get developed in time so they can go in there too.  I'm seriously going to miss them.

Recipe - inspired by Baker Bettie

Makes 15 large-ish cookies 

• 115g/4oz butter
• 115g/4oz caster sugar
• 115g/4oz dark brown sugar (or 60g/2oz dark brown sugar and 60g/2oz dark muscavado sugar)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 155g/5.5oz plain flour
• 170g/6oz milk chocolate chips 

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4 and line 2-3 baking sheets with greaseproof paper.
2. Beat the butter and sugars together in a bowl until smooth and creamy.
3. Add the vanilla and egg and beat until fully incorporated.
4. Stir in the flour until combined.
5. Stir in the chocolate chips until evenly mixed throughout the batter. 
6. Scoop heaped tablespoonfuls of mixture (I actually used an ice cream scoop) and place on the trays, spacing them well apart since they spread a lot. (I got 5-6 cookies per tray).
7. Bake for about 10 minutes.  The cookies should have spread, have golden edges but still look underdone in the centre.
8. Remove and allow them to rest on the tray for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.

That's an A4 book, just so you know and can compare the cookie's size to it.

Eggless Chocolate Chip Cookies

So last week there was a knock at the door mid afternoon.  The fiancé goes to answer it and comes back with a box addressed to me.  Me getting parcels is not strange.  I do a lot of my shopping online.  However I hadn't ordered anything recently, and certainly not something that warranted a box of this size or shape.  Confused but curious I opened it.  Turns out my lovely sister had sent me and the fiancé an Easter gift in the form of a box full of different Lindor truffles, which was quite wonderful.  However, this got me wanting to send something back to her but since I'm trying to be more careful with my money I didn't really want to buy expensive Easter chocolate.  I did however have a cupboard full of baking ingredients and we had recently discussed biscuits on our last Skype chat.  But if I'm sending her biscuits then I obviously have to send biscuits to my brothers and Dad and his partner too.  Otherwise it wouldn't be fair.  So I spent all of Tuesday evening baking four different types of biscuits.  My sister had mentioned Vienesse Fingers in our chat, so I mad her some of those though I piped them into egg shapes.  For my Dad and his partner, I made orange shortbread covered in chocolate.

My two brothers though...I wasn't really sure about them.  The elder eats pretty much anything and in the end I settled on a chocolate biscuit (which I will post soon) but the younger is picky.  Ridiculously so.  Even about sweet things.  He doesn't like ice cream or cake or anything like that.  Did he even like biscuits?  It was a while before I remembered that he had mentioned there was one type of biscuit he likes: Maryland Chocolate Chip Cookies.  They are rather scrumptious cookies.  There has been many an occasion where I have eaten a whole pack of them in one sitting without realising.  So I went looking for a copy-cat recipe, which found one.  Or at least one that claimed to be one.  I figured it was worth a shot.

Well, the final result didn't taste like Maryland Cookies.  They were still nice though.  My honest analysis of the taste is that they are like gingerbread but without the ginger.  The fiancé agrees with this.  I think it's the golden syrup in the recipe.  You can taste it.  They are not a particularly crunchy biscuit either.  I'm glad I flattened them before baking because otherwise they wouldn't have been flat and would have been even softer.  Not that they were that soft.  Just not as crunchy and crumbly as I would have liked.  We enjoyed them though.  Quite a lovely biscuit.  And no eggs in this one either.

Recipe - adapted from Allrecipes
Makes about 30

• 165g/6oz vegetable shortening or margarine (not butter, I used Stork)
  
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 75g/3oz caster sugar
• 4 tbsp golden syrup
• 2 tsp milk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 260g/9oz plain flour
• 1.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 100g/3.5oz milk chocolate chips

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4 and line 2-3 baking trays with greaseproof paper.
2. In a large bowl mix the shortening/margarine with the salt and sugar until pale and fluffy.
3. Add in the golden syrup, milk and vanilla extract and mix in.
4. Add the flour, bicarbonate of soda and chocolate chips and mix until just combined.
5. Shape teaspoonfuls of mixture into balls and then flatten and place on the trays.
6. Bake for 10-15 minutes until the edges of the biscuits start to turn golden.
7. Remove and let sit on the tray for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Milk and Cookies Cupcakes

I've been trying to remember what inspired these and I honestly cannot remember.  For all I know it was a random idea which has steadily developed as I worked out all the component parts.  I am aware it is not an original idea.  'Milk and cookies' or 'cookies and cream' has been done before, but I try to avoid looking at recipes for things that I have ideas for because it's more fun to figure it all out myself.  Then I can be extra pleased when the final result is a success.  Obviously I look at recipes for individual parts but the combined thing is never from one place.

So, anyway, somewhere along the way I decided I wanted to do a cupcake inspired by the idea of 'milk and cookies'.  Now originally, I was going to base the cake part on the recipe I used for the hot-chocolate and strawberry milkshake cupcakes, where a lot of milk went into the actual batter before it was baked.  I would just obviously leave out the hot-chocolate/strawberry milkshake powder.  But then I was looking about for other milk cupcakes, to see if there was any other ways of doing it, and re-discovered the Tres Leches cake.  This is something I've seen before, usually accompanied by Dulce de Leche buttercream (which I've made before to go with toffee cupcakes).  I've never made it though but after reading several recipes I knew this would be a much better cake for the milk part of my 'milk and cookies' cupcakes.  I settled on a recipe I found on Allrecipes which was really well rated, but did something you're really not meant to do unless you're a really good baker and altered the recipe a little bit.

The changes I made were based on some of the reviewer comments which made sense to me.  The biggest was that I separated the eggs and whisked the egg whites before adding them in.  This was to get a better rise and a lighter cake.  Since this has often been the result when I've used it in my standard vanilla sponge cake, I thought this was a good idea.  I also added bicarbonate of soda alongside the baking powder, to get a little extra rise.  Well I certainly did end up with a much lighter cake.  These things were practically weightless when they came out the oven, prior to drowning in the milk.  It was rather amazing.  Another change I made was that I reduced the number of eggs from 5 to 4.  This is because the sizing of eggs is different in America compared to here in the UK.  Again, there were reviews mentioning poor results with so many eggs, so I thought I would use fewer eggs, because the UK sizes are bigger than the US.  And it worked out brilliant so hoorah!  Finally, I didn't use anywhere near the amount of milk recommended.  I originally made half a batch of the milk mixture but only ended up using half of that because I did not want my cakes to turn to mush.  Also turned out to be a good decision.  The cakes were still milk sodden all the way through, but were not mushy or goopy and everyone that ate them thought the balance of milk to cake was perfect.  So in the write up, it'll be a quarter batch of the original recipe.

The decoration for the cake ended up being a no-brainer, since the cake was the 'milk' the topping had to be the 'cookie'.  I knew from the get-go that I was going to decorate with a chocolate chip cookie and so obviously it made sense to make the buttercream cookie dough flavoured.  I've made it before and it was so delicious!

The final result was a complete success.  As I said, everyone thought the balance of cake to milk was perfect.  Lovely and wet and sweet but not goopy.  The cake stayed completely intact.  The buttercream was deliciously sweet too, and went splendidly with the cake and the biscuit was a nice little bonus.  My testers removed the cookie, scooped up some of the buttercream from the cake and ate it that way.  They said it was amazing. 

Recipe - makes about 14 cakes
 

Cookies

• 50g/1.7oz butter
• 65g/2.3oz caster sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 75g/2.5oz plain flour
• 1/2 tbsp milk
• 50g/1.7oz chocolate chips

1. Preheat the oven to 190°C/375°F/Gas Mark 5 and line two baking trays with greaseproof paper.
2. Combine all the ingredients together in a bowl and mix until you get a nice dough.  You may have to form the dough with your hands after the initial mixing.
3. Shape into small half tablespoon size balls and flatten slightly, placing onto the trays, spaced well apart as they spread.  Make sure you've got at least 14 but you should end up with spares, just in case.
4. Bake until the edges are nice and golden, about 10-15 minutes.
5. Remove and leave to cool on the tray for about 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack.

Cake - adapted from Allrecipes.com

• 190g/6.5oz plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 115g/4oz butter
• 200g/7oz caster sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 115ml/4fl.oz whole milk
• 100g/3.5oz condensed milk
• 85g/3oz evaporated milk

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4 and line a 12 hole and a 6 hole muffin tin with 14 muffin cases. 
2. Sift the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda into a bowl and set aside.
3. In a separate bowl, cream together the butter, sugar and vanilla until smooth and creamy.
4. Separate the eggs and add the yolks one at a time to the sugar butter, beating in after each addition.
5. Add the flour mixture to the batter two tablespoons at a time, and mix.
6. Whisk the eggs into soft peaks.  Add a spoonful to the cake batter and fold in.
7. Add the rest of the egg whites and fold in until you have no white streaks visible in your mixture.
8. Divide the mixture between the cases, filling them about two thirds full.
9. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until they are well risen and the tops are springy. 
10. Remove to a wire rack and use a skewer to poke about 10 holes into each cake.  Leave to cool.
11. Once cool, combine the whole milk, condensed milk and evaporated milk in a bowl.
12. Dip the top of the cakes into the milk one at a time, repeating several times until all the milk is used up. (This is less messy than pouring it over each cake and still soaks the cake through.)
13. Put in the fridge for about 30 minutes before icing.

Buttercream - adapted from What's Cooking on Planet Byn (as sited when used previously)

• 170g/6oz butter
• 90g/3oz brown sugar
• 225g/8oz icing sugar
• 65g/2.2oz plain flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1.5 tbsp milk
• 1.5 tsp vanilla extract
• 40g/1.5oz chocolate chips

1. Mix together the butter and the brown sugar until creamy.
2. Beat in the icing sugar until it is smooth.
3. Add flour and salt and beat in.
4. Finally add milk and vanilla and keep mixing until everything is combined and you have a reasonable smooth mixture.
5. Put in a piping bag with a large star nozzle and pipe a swirl of buttercream on top of each cake.
6. Decorate with chocolate chips then put in the fridge to set for about an hour.
7. Push a cookie into each buttercream swirl, keeping the weight leaning towards the centre of the cake so it does not fall over.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Whoops, I meant to get this up last week, since I made them on Thursday.  Time keeps getting away from me at the moment.  Anyway, chocolate chip cookies were one of the few things I would bake a lot during my time at university because they were quick, simple and inexpensive.  Seems strange I've not made them in such a long time because they are yummy.  I have two recipes I alternate between when I make them.  The one used for these was the second one I acquired.  I got it out of a book belonging to someone else and now can't remember which book.  I like looking at other people's cookbooks and I write down recipes I like.  Nowadays if I do that, I make a note of the source too, in case I want it to go up here.  But alas, not this one.  If I find it I'll credit it.  For now I've just been working on the version written in my notebook.

So I decided to make these due to having an egg yolk left over from making the almond paste for the Semla cupcakes, as well as chocolate chips sitting in the cupboard.  No point letting a perfectly good yolk go to waste.  My other cookie recipe doesn't use egg, so I'll have to post that one at some point in the future too.

I do really enjoy these cookies.  When you first bite into them, you may think they don't taste that impressive.  But then you'll find yourself eating another, and another.  They are surprisingly more-ish.  And rather scrummy with ice cream.  They're meant to be a slightly soft biscuit.  You may think they need longer in the oven than they do, but if you leave them too long, they end up really hard because they firm up after they come out.  So they will be soft when they come out but don't worry.

Recipe - makes about 20

• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tbsp water
• 75g/2.6oz butter
• 50g/1.7oz icing sugar
• 150g/5.3oz plain flour
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• Pinch of salt
• 100g/3.5oz chocolate chips 

1. Mix the egg yolk, vanilla extract and water together in a jug.
2. In a large bowl, blend together the icing sugar and butter until it is pale and fluffy.
3. Add the egg mixture to the sugar butter a little at a time, mixing in after each addition.
4. Sift in the flour, salt and baking powder, add the chocolate chips and stir together until just incorporated.  You should end up with a somewhat soft and sticky dough.
5. Shape the dough into a cylinder that's about 30cm/12 inches long and wrap in clingfilm.  Refrigerate for at least an hour.
6. Preheat the oven to 160°C/320°F/Gas Mark 2 and line two baking trays with greaseproof paper.
7. Remove the dough from the fridge and cut into 20 even slices.  If the cookies get squashed when cutting, shape them into circles with your fingers.  Place on the tray, an even amount of distance apart.
8. Bake for about 15 minutes.  They will seem too soft but they do firm up.
9. Leave to cool on the tray for about 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack.

Failed Experiment - Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

28/06/13: I have now made chewy chocolate chip cookies successfully.  Recipe is over here!

Today I had a free day and when I have a free day, I often want to bake.  I also wanted something I can take with my lunch when at the school as I have only one Viennese Finger left.  Now it's probably apparent that I've been on a bit of a biscuit kick of late.  I go through phases of what sort of sweet treat I crave.  Currently it's biscuits and ice cream.  Not necessarily together.  What I really wanted to do was chocolate chip cookies, but not one of my usual recipes.  I wanted chewy cookies, like you get from Millie's Cookies.  So I trawled the web for recipes and eventually settled on one I liked the sound of.

Then I realised we'd used all the eggs up yesterday and I really didn't feel like going to the shops.  Luckily our hens had produced one egg this morning (they seem to be in a bit of a lull right now) so I at least had that.  Unfortunately the recipe called for one egg plus an egg yolk.  So I spent a fun few minutes separating and weighing the white and yolk and then splitting both in two.  My spare half an egg white went in the ice cube tray I use to freeze my spare whites for later use.

Anyway, here they are:

The result was...not what I wanted.  Sure, they look good but they taste strange (like popcorn, my boyfriend says) and they certainly aren't chewy.  The latter is likely down to me keeping them in the oven too long.  I keep doing that since they never seem to be the right colour.  Really I should just take them out when I'm supposed to.  I also couldn't taste the chocolate chips very well.  That 'popcorn' taste was a bit overwhelming.  I was quite disappointed.  Hence, no recipe today.  I am determined to try it again and see if they come out better.  Fingers crossed.

This coming Monday I have a birthday cake to make so I'll hopefully have a more successful report to make then, along with a recipe recommendation.