A Choc-Chip Formidable Diet Enemy

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Baking is all about sharing for me. It has to be. For anyone who doesn't live with about 10 people, it just has to be. It's just the most wonderful feeling, feeding delicious tidbits to friends and family and making them happy. This isn't like cooking- it's not nourishing the body no no - baked goods nourish the soul.

 Chocolate chip cookies are very much like pizza- people have VERY specific tastes and what's Nobel prize deserving for one person doesn't even appear on the radar for another.

These cookies were large, super chocolatey and crunchy. They have that New-York coffee shop feel- they've got the American size, the luring peaking chocolate and that gorgeous oven tan.

Taking these to work to share with my colleagues, and Ralph's colleagues is just so wonderful. There are precious few ways for people to show warmth towards others these days- even the people with whom you spend most of your time. Playing it cool is much more fashionable, but unfortunately it isn't very me. This is how I compensate :-).

Chocolate pieces held together with minimal dough is how I try to take care of those around me. How do you show others warmth?

Chocolate Chip Cookies
From Smitten Kitchen

250 g cake flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
170 g melted unsalted butter
1 cup caramel sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tblsp vanilla essence
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 cups chocolate chips

1) Preheat oven to 165 C.
2) Sift together the flour, bicarb and salt.
3)  Beat butter together with the sugars. I thought I was going wrong here because this is what I ended up with:

   
but this was perfectly fine!

4)  Add the vanilla essence, egg and egg yolk and beat thoroughly.
5) Add the flour mixture and mix thoroughly with a spoon- don't beat here as this forms a sort of dough. 
6) Add chocolate chips and stir in to distribute evenly:

7) Now, make big balls of this dough- I measured roughly with a 60 ml measure. And place, quite far apart on a baking tray.(I used a Swiss roll tray and placed 2 per row- about 3-4 rows per tray, these are large cookies!)

8) The cookies should bake for about 15 minutes, you'll know they're ready when the outer edges of the cookie brown. Try not to do more than one batch at a time- I did and my bottom tray ended up baking very differently- my chocolate chips melted and burned and created a very hard unpleasant cookie- avoid this!