Chocolate Chip Cookies De-mystified:

Just when I was sorting out the pictures of this blog post, I came across a post by a fellow blogger, about a baking class he attended. And somehow I found that very inspiring, going through the pictures and soaking in  the experience. It seemed to fortify my desire of attending a baking school and improve my baking skills. I am mostly a self taught baker, who started off at the old oven back in my maternal home in Calcutta. The old oven gave way to the convection microwave, and somehow some baking or the other, although pretty rudimentary, carried on.After shifting base to this country which I now call home, I fell in love with the lovely cooking range in  my kitchen. Baking began again, with a  new zest. Somehow I am not too keen on using cake mixes or cookies, and I like doing my baking from scratch. Puddings and pies, cakes and cookies, crumbles and strudels, yes, I did spin out all those.

The all time American favorite: the Chocolate Chip Cookie: happens to be my husband's favorite too. The man is choosy about what desserts he likes to have, and also his choice of cookies and biscuits. The store bought cookies were over, and there was half a packet of semi-sweet chocolate chips which had been lying in the refrigerator. So an hour before he got back home from work, the thought of baking him some cookies came to my mind. But cookie dough usually needs to be refrigerated, and I did not have that amount of time as I normally did when I baked cookies. Normally when i bake cookies, I usually keep my butter out of the refrigerator for a few hours to soften it, and which makes blending the dough easier. And then I keep the dough covered in cling film in the refrigerator for a few hours to firm it a  bit before baking.

However it was a different case this time. This was a sudden decision which needed a different plan of action. Then I came across my savior of the day: Stephanie of Joy Of Baking.She seemed to be also in a  hurry to bake up a batch of cookies, and so she took me through how to do it in her instructional video, which did not call for the refrigeration of the dough. When my husband wiped off  8 cookies in a jiffy, I knew that the plan and the recipe had worked.  So a huge thank you to Stephanie.

I also had to cook Chicken Curry and Rice for dinner and had a Hindi Movie date with hubby at the local theatre. The cookies turned out even better than I had imagined, and so did the dinner. The only dampener in the day was the boring Hindi film. Coming back to the cookies, I must say that I faced one problem. I do not have a stand mixer as has been shown in the video I was trying to follow. Mixing cake batter is something, but trying to cream almost frozen butter with two different kinds of sugar, did not quite work with the blender at home. I scraped all the dough off  into a large bowl, and whisked it all by hand. I guess I compensated for bunking gym for a day for the Bollywood flick, as It did take some muscle power to bring it all in one good consistency.  I remembered one thing, which I had heard from many people who regularly bake, that the cookie batter does not need to incorporate as much air as a cake batter needed.  Adding the eggs  to the batter made whisking a lot easier. I added the sieved dry ingredients in batches to the wet ingredients, and that made it easier to incorporate them and I was also saved from having flour all over meself. Another thing, which I would like to add is that my baking in general improved a lot, when  I started using standard measuring cups, as using the cups at home and the spoons, is not always a good idea, for something which always requires such specific measurements.

CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES: 
recipe courtesy: http://www.joyofbaking.com/ChocolateChipCookies.html

Ingredients: 
All purpose Flour: 2 1/4 cups
Light Brown Sugar: 3/4 cup
Granulated White sugar: 3/4 cup
Butter: 2 sticks: 226 grams
Vanilla extract: 2 tbsp
Eggs: 2
Salt: 1 tsp
Baking powder: 1 1/2 tbsp
Semi-sweet Chocolate chips: 1 1/2 cups
Parchment paper
Baking trays

Procedure: 
Take the two sticks of butter from the refrigerator and chop them into cubes.Microwave the butter for about 10 secs, to just take the chill off, yet keep it firm.  In a large bowl, add the cubed butter and the brown and white sugar, with a fork first to break it down. Then use a whisk to blend it all together.

Add the eggs in the creamed sugar mixture one by one, and the vanilla extract and keep whisking. The blending become easier at this stage. One trick, in baking is that, when you are whisking by hand, ensure that you only whisk in one direction, as this helps in folding in air in the batter.

In a another bowl, sieve in the flour, salt and baking powder. Mix the dry ingredients in batches in the wet mixture and blend for a few minutes more till it all comes together well.

If you have an ice-cream scoop, which scoops around 2 tbsp, then use that to scoop out dough in a parchment paper lined baking tray, leaving some gap in between. I did not have an ice-cream scoop, so I used two tablespoons to scoop out the dough. As I used butter right form the refrigerator, I did not need to refrigerate the dough. I flattened out each scoop of the cookie dough with my fingers, to give me a round shape.

Bake in a preheated oven at 375 F for around 10-12 minutes. When the cookies turn golden brown around the edges, take them out and cool them on a wire rack. I did not have a wire rack, so I just took the parchment paper off the baking tray with the cookies on it, and placed them on a table to cool down. The centers of teh cookie will be soft when you take the out, but they will firm up once cooled. If you want your cookies to be chewy, then you should only bake for 8 to 10 minutes. Or if you want them extra crisp, then bake them for 14 minutes. I baked each batch for around 12 minutes,and they were just perfect for me.

The batter made me around 35 large cookies.  The batter did not spread as Stephanie had warned it might, as the dough had not been frozen. All that I had were a big batch of large golden chocolate chip cookies.

Any leftovers of this dough can be frozen. Make small rounds of the dough and refrigerate them in a cookie tray. after the dough balls harden up, store them in a zip lock plastic bag and freeze them. Bake them to your convenience, but you might just need to increase the baking time by a few minutes.

With Thanksgiving just round the corner, I guess its time for me to bake some bread.

As I always say, Bon Appetit.