CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES AND MY 'THE CAKE MISTRESS' PAGE ON FACEBOOK

August 03, 2015

Nowadays my focus is shifting to something else. Not a vague obsession, This time I am investing most of my time for it too.... Its a cake thing.. Cake has always been my weakness, not in terms of taste but in baking it. But recently it has shifted to cake decorating and its only a while back I started getting it right without any mistakes. For months I had this problem of either not getting the cream rightly whipped or over whipping and yielding butter out of it. Now that I have started getting it right, my next look on was for different ways of cake decorating. Now that I have started doing it artistically, I started making it for friends and families. Also I started getting requests from some neighbors and friends in doing it for them. Thus my cake page on facebook 'The Cake Mistress' was born. Click on the link to see some of my works. https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Cake-Mistress/341317546074465?fref=ts. If all you people show some love by stopping by my page and pour in your likes, it would be highly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Posting some of my cake works here.

After getting into this whole cake thing, Its cake all around. Dreams of it every time, even during eating, chatting, sleeping and so on. So now I am having less time for blogging, I decided to devote one or two days in a week for it. Yes, I need one or two days to make one post up to the blog, since my kids always get in between whatever I am doing. They barely sleep and drive me nuts when I am not able to finish my plans on time.
Ok so lets get back to todays post, Its chocolate chip cookies. Being a part of the fondbites group compels me to try their bake-along recipes, which is why I have at least a post today on blog. The choco-chip cookies was something I always wanted to try, but was lazy. This was an apt situation to try this recipe and it came out divine. I think I under-baked it and loved the doughy center which kept me going for having more and more. But if you follow the instructions right you will get perfect cookies.

Recipe adapted from here
Ingredients:

Unsalted butter – 200 gms
Granulated white sugar – 1 cup
Dark brown sugar – 1/2 cup
Eggs – 2
Vanilla extract – 2 teaspoons
All-purpose flour – 3 cups
Baking soda – 1 teaspoon
Salt – 1/2 teaspoon
Chocolate chips – 1 1/2 cups ( mix of your favorites )
Mix of toasted nuts – 1 cup ( optional – I didn’t add)

Method:
1. Pre-heat oven to 180 degree C. Line a baking tray with butter paper or silicon mat. Sift together all-purpose flour, baking soda and salt. Keep aside.

2. Melt the butter in microwave until it is liquid. It should not be hot. Just in liquid form. Using melted butter is one of the key aspects here. Add the melted butter into the bowl of your electric beater and add in both the sugars.

3. Beat the butter and the sugars on medium high speed for about 5 minutes until the mixture becomes thick.

4. Add the eggs one at a time and beat on medium speed for 10 to 15 seconds only. Do not over beat the eggs. This is another key aspect.

5. Add pure vanilla extract to the mixture and beat just until combined. Remove the bowl from the beater.

And that’s how the mixture looks at this stage.

6. Add the entire flour content into the mixture, use a rubber spatula to mix the flour gently.
7. You will get a crumbly mixture first. Now use your hands to gently mix up the dough to combine.
8. Check for the consistency. If the dough is sticky like how it is in the picture, you need to add a little more flour. This is the next important key factor. The dough should have enough flour to keep it just dry and not sticky.

9. I added about 3 tablespoons of flour to the dough. Mix it very roughly using your hands.
This is how it looks after the addition of the flour

10. Add the chocolate chips. If using toasted nuts, add them in now. Use your hands to gently fold in the chocolate chips evenly across the dough.

11. Make balls of 1.5 inches diameter. Place them in the prepared baking tray with a spacing of 2 inches. Bake in the pre-heated oven for 11 minutes. Here is the final key factor to the best cookies ever. Do not bake more than this time and do not change the temperature either.