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For five years I’ve been using a chocolate chip cookie recipe I’ve tweaked and tested so many times that it has become my favourite chocolate chip cookie recipe. If I ever needed to make chocolate chip cookies I would never look elsewhere. I had tried too many recipes and I knew the pain that I’d gone through to find that one reliable recipe. I happily kept baking the same chocolate chip cookies. This was until today. After my first successful Dorie Greenspan recipe I was all geared up to step out of my comfort zone and try her chocolate chip cookies.
I halved the recipe and skipped the walnuts. I used the huge Ghirardelli 60% cacao chocolate chips. I had no idea what I was in for! *big grin*
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Adapted from: Baking From My Home to Yours (excellent baking book!)
Yield: 10-12 cookies
1 cup flour
½ tsp salt
½ tsp baking soda
4 oz/100g/1 stick butter
½ cup sugar
1/3rd cup light brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
1 cup chocolate chip
- Sieve the flour, salt and baking soda together. Keep aside.
- In a bowl, beat the butter for about a minute. Then add the sugars and beat for another 2 minutes until well blended and creamy. Beat in the vanilla.
- Add in the egg.
- Reducing the mixer speed to the lowest setting, add in the flour a little at a time, until evenly incorporated.
- Stir in the chocolate chips. Reserve a handful for later. Refrigerate the cookie dough for half an hour.
- On a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or on a Silpat, spoon rounded tablespoonfuls of the cookie dough.
- Bake them in a preheated oven at 375°F/190°C for 10-12 minutes.
- Something that I *love* to do is open the oven half way through baking and dot the dough that has spread with MORE chocolate chips!
- Then a good idea would also be to turn the sheet the other way round so that the cookies will bake evenly.
- Let cool on a cooling rack. Have them with a tall glass of milk.
These cookies turned out to be absolutely delightful. Crisp around the edges and soft and chewy in the middle. The butter was a little on the higher side, so the next time around I’d probably reduce it by 20-25g. The extra chocolate chips were a bonus! And given that they were 60% cacao they beautifully balanced the sweetness of the cookie. Now I have two favourite chocolate chip cookie recipes!
A spoonful of
nutella makes the medicine go down!
I earnestly believe Nutella can bring world peace. Who wouldn’t be transported to a completely different world with something as little as a spoonful of Nutella?
Today is World Nutella Day and I only need an excuse to use up some more Nutella instead of devouring it off a spoon. With a little help from my eating partner, I knew Nutella Pinwheel Cookies would be perfect.
Nutella Pinwheel Cookies
Yield: 25-30 cookies
125g / 1 stick butter, softened
½ cup sugar
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 heaped cup sifted flour
¼ cup Nutella to spread, a little more won’t hurt, but be careful not to overdo lest it ooze!
2-3 tablespoon, toasted, chopped hazelnuts
- Preheat oven to 175C/350F.
- Mix the butter and sugar together till creamy.
- Mix in the egg yolk and the vanilla essence. The mixture should be light and well combined.
- Stir in the flour and refrigerate the dough for 15 minutes so that it can firm up and facilitate easy rolling.
- Next, roll out the dough into a rectangle of ¼ inch thickness.
- Spread the Nutella making sure to leave one finger space on all four sides. Again, we don’t want the Nutella to ooze out!
- Sprinkle over the chopped hazelnuts and roll up the dough.
- Refrigerate for another ten minutes before cutting the slices.
- Lay the slices on a lined baking sheet and bake for 12-15 minutes till slightly golden at the edges. Baking time will vary depending on how thick you’ve cut them. Colour is a good indication.
Now there are two ways you could cut the slices – with a knife (surprise!) and a better, neater way would be with a firm thin wire (found some leftover wire from my flower making class back in school!). When you use a wire you will have a very clean looking pinwheel with no unwanted brown Nutella spots, and a crumbly looking texture, much like the first picture. When you use a knife, you will see that the Nutella smears the rest of the cookie while the knife passes through the dough, albeit smooth textured (the second image).
