The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies || Baking

I did some baking on the weekend and took a few pictures while I was doing so, so that I could share the recipe with you! I can honestly say these are the most delicious cookies I've discovered so far, because they are crunchy on the outside but really chewy and delicious in the middle, and they are so super easy!

I am all for cookies that are jam-packed with chocolate but you could really put anything in these, you could do nuts, MnMs, sweets, caramel, anything like that, so feel free to switch the chocolate for anything you feel like! You can also very easily leave out the cocoa and add in a few teaspoons of vanilla essence instead if you want vanilla cookies rather, pretty much anything will work with these!

Okay so the first thing you want to do is preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius and make sure you've got all the ingredients; you will need:

250g room temperature butter

270g self-raising flour

280g caster sugar

60g cocoa

1 large egg

1/4 cup water

As much chocolate and whatever type that you like:

I used 400g of milk chocolate and 160g of white chocolate

Okay, so get out a big mixing bowl (it does need to be quite large) and throw in the butter and caster sugar. Before putting the butter in the bowl, chop it roughly into smaller blocks, so it is easier to break down. 

You could do this in a KitchenAid or electric mixer, but I think it is easy enough and less complicated with a wooden spoon or spatula. 

So now you want to cream together the butter and sugar. This does take a little while as the butter needs to be broken down and there is a lot of sugar to incorporate, but basically keep mixing and working the mixture until you have a smooth, creamy mixture. 

Now whisk in the egg. 

Next, you can sift in the flour and the cocoa together. This might be easier if done in small batches of the dry ingredients being gradually added and then incorporated, and so on. The full 1/4 cup of water doesn't all need to be added. If the mixture is too dry at this point, add some of the water. You will probably need to add at least half of it, but see how wet/dry your mixture is and adjust accordingly. 

You can switch to your hands to incorporate the last of the flour-cocoa mix, I find it a lot easier as the mixture should be dough-y and thick. 

Next, chop/break up your chocolate (or whatever else you want to put in the biscuits). You can chop the chocolate as finely or roughly as you like, but I choose to leave mine really big and chunky- so I just break up the squares and add them like that, no chopping or anything. Use your hands to make sure all the chocolate is nicely mixed into the cookie dough. 

You're pretty much done now. Grease/line with baking paper 2/3 baking trays and then roll the dough into fairly large balls and place them, nicely spread out, on the baking trays. You can change the size of the balls depending on how big you want your cookies, but I find the size of about a ping-pong ball makes perfectly big cookies. 

Pop the trays in the oven for 7-10 minutes. This completely depends on your oven, so make sure you check them so that they don't burn. When you take them out, leave them until they are completely cool and voiiila- there you have it!

This recipe, for me, makes about 24 fairly large cookies. 

Enjoy- happy baking! 

Snickerdoodle Sandwich Cookies

The holidays bring on endless baking opportunities, and I kind of took it a bit overboard considering I literally hadn't baked in about 4 months! So among some of the thing I baked were these Snickerdoodle cookies, which were so delicious and easy that I had to share them with you (side note: I'm do realise how long it's been since I last posted! I did a bit of a blog revamp and changed the look a bit- but haven't posted for ages- so apologies haha)


Okay back to baking- so yeah, I didn't know this before (I think it's an American thing??), but snickerdoodles are pretty much like cinnamon biscuits/cookies. I am such a cinnamon fan, so I had to make these- and I sandwiched them with vanilla buttercream in the middle because it makes them even more delicious and without it, I found them a bit too crunchy and hard, the icing softens them a little. 


So yeah, here they are- I take no credit for the recipe- I got it off Fine Cooking's website- but here are my renditions.


INGREDIENTS:

You will need:

For cookies: 

         1 tsp. Bicarb (baking soda)

         Pinch table salt

         2 tsp. cream of tartar

         2-2/3 cups ordinary flour

         1 cup unsalted butter, softened at room temperature

         2 cups sugar

         2 large eggs

         3 Tbs. ground cinnamon

       For butter cream:

      1 and 1/2 cups icing sugar

      125g softened butter

      2 teaspoons vanilla essence

      1 vanilla pod

WHAT TO DO: 

Start by setting the oven to 180 degrees Celsius/ 350 Fahrenheit

In a large mixing bowl, put in your softened (not melted) butter and 1 and 1/2 cups of the sugar. Beat them on high with an electric whisk until the mixture looks quite bitty. 


Now add the 2 eggs and whisk again on medium speed until the batter is creamy and smooth looking. 


Next, we mix the dry ingredients. So into a separate bowl/mixing jug type thing sieve in the flour, bicarb, cream of tartar, salt and 1T of the cinnamon. 

To make the cookie dough, you must now gradually add in the flour mixture, a couple of tablespoons at a time, into the sugar/butter/egg mixture. So start by adding a little and then using the electric beater to combine it.

Continue doing this, gradually adding the flour mix, and a thick dough will start to form. 

Once pretty much all the flour has been added, you'll find that the dough is too thick to continue using the beater. So just switch to using your hands to combine the last of the flour and form a ball of your cookie dough. 


Now, in a separate, small bowl, mix the remaining 2T of the cinnamon and the the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar- to basically form cinnamon sugar (the measurements aren't important here, just make cinnamon sugar like you would for pancakes and you can add more or less cinnamon depending on what you like). Form little round balls of cookie dough and dunk them in the cinnamon sugar, ensuring they are very thoroughly covered in it. 


Continue this until all the dough is used. Place your cookies on a greased (or use a Silpad) baking tray. No need to press down the biscuits with a fork- they flatten themselves. Don't make the balls too big cause they grow a lot. Also, don't put them too close to each other on the tray. 


Cook them for 12-20 mins (depending on your oven), but start checking from 12 mins because they turn and burn quite suddenly. They will be golden but not dark dark yet when they are done. 


To make the vanilla butter cream to sandwich them, sift the icing sugar into a mixing bowl and cream in 125g of softened butter. Add the vanilla essence and the seeds from a vanilla pod too (optional). Now sandwich the cookies. Take 2 evenly sized biscuits and sandwich them using the icing so that they look like this:

And tahdah, that's it! They are so easy, and super good, so I hope your enjoy them!