Tate's Chocolate Chip Cookies

   


   It's a red day.


   My body was scrunched up into a ball. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the pain away. Beautiful blondies to be made, cookie recipes to try, cakes to drool over... I fell asleep.


   Some eight hours later I was back in the kitchen, thinking of what to make. Mum made some kuah durian- how do I translate that to English... durian gravy I suppose, which you can eat with slices of bread or roti jala, a nice sort-of-pancake that's yellow in colour. I'll try to get Mum to write an estimation of the ingredients needed for the recipe and post it here (she usually just bungs in the amount she thinks is needed and they always turn out lovely).


   Meanwhile, I sat watching Mum cook. Then I stared at the oven. It stared back. I decided to make Tate's Chocolate Chip cookies, a recipe I took from Gwyneth Paltrow's lovely site called Goop.  I'm on this search for really nice crispy and crunchy chocolate chip cookies because that's how Mum and my younger brother likes them. So far I haven't had much success but maybe I haven't tried enough.


   I posted my version of the recipe, but I think it's best if you go with the original version. After cutting down on the sugar (it has become a habit now), the cookies were still quite sweet but you could also taste the baking soda a little, which is a no-no. I'm still thinking of how I can cut down on the sugar but avoid the bitter taste.


   I also only had a small amount of chocolate chips left, so I put a measly amount of 1/2 cup into the batter. The original recipe called for 2 cups! I know, I know. Mean! But I had a craving for something else with chocolate chips so I wanted to save some for that.


   I also used soft brown sugar instead of dark brown sugar, which is why the colour didn't turn out as dark as shown in Goop. 


   The cookies really spread so be sure to space them far, far away from each other. Two inches, to be exact. Next time I'll add some nuts.

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Tate's Chocolate Chip Cookies

taken and adapted from Gwyneth Paltrows's site, Goop

[click HERE for original recipe]

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 cup (2 sticks) butter at room temperature (I used margarine)

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup soft brown sugar, firmly packed

1 tsp water

1 tsp vanilla

2 large eggs, beaten

1/2 cup chocolate chips (next time I'll definitely put more)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Grease or line baking sheet with baking paper.

2. Whisk the flour, baking soda and salt in one bowl. 

3. Use a wooden spoon to beat the butter around a bit and then add the sugar. Mix well.

4. Add water and vanilla and eggs. Mix well.

5. Add flour and mixed until just combined.

6. Add chocolate chips and your favourite nuts, if desired (highly recommended). Mix until incorporated.

7. Drop teaspoonfuls of batter onto prepared baking sheet (but of course you can choose how big you want your cookies to be)

8. Bake for 15 minutes or until the edges are nice and brown.

9. Cool on a rack before lifting the cookies off and storing in an airtight container.

For Aiman With Love... Martha's Double Chocolate Brownies

   This is all that was left when I had the chance to take a photo.

   One again I lament the fact that I never bought that digital camera that I'd wanted for so long. What can I say? Money just wont stay with me. I'm not a crazy shopper, so I have no idea where it all goes. I'll have to fix that phone of mine and then make do with the photos that it can take. If the light is good, my old Sony Ericsson phone is not too bad, but Dad's phone... huhu. At least it can take photos, I guess.


   I went crazy and baked three things in one day. Aiman was going back to Terengganu the day after, so I wanted to (take the chance to) make her something to take back. She wanted Martha's Double Chocolate Brownies which I made last year, I think, which she remembers fondly as having been very moist which she likes.


   So I Googled the recipe (when I made them last, I referred to Martha's book, which I loved but has now returned to its rightful place at the Kelantan Public Library) and made them.


   Let me say that they were the best brownies I ever baked! They were just nicely done, without being over or underbaked (which happens a lot to most things I make), and oh so chocolaty. I wish I hadn't reduced the sugar but they were still good. 


   I hope my little sister (who is actually a lot taller - and bigger, hehe- than me) enjoyed them!

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Martha's Double Chocolate Brownies

taken and adapted from Martha Stewart

[Click here to see original recipe]

Ingredients

1/2 cup margarine or butter

6 ounces dark chocolate

1 cup castor sugar

3 large eggs

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup plus 2tbsp all purpose flour, sifted

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180C.

2. Line an 8 x 8 inch pan with baking paper.

3. Melt margarine (or butter) and chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a pot of simmering water. Stir until smooth.

4. Remove from heat and add in sugar, whisking until combined.

5. Whisk in eggs, one by one. 

Allow the mixture to cool a little before doing this or you'll have bits of cooked egg white swimming around your batter. Not good.

6. Fold in flour and mix until just combined.

7. Pour batter into pan.

8. Bake for about 35 to 40 minutes. Check using a toothpick, if it comes with with some crumbs it's done.

9. Cool before cutting into squares.

Chocolate Chip Whoopsie Pies with Marshmallow Feeling

   I fell in love.


   It was like being on a cloud- but of course I've never been on one before. If you could eat melted clouds like you eat melted chocolate, it would taste like this marshmallow filling that I made using Jac's recipe (more about the filling and my feelings later). Jac has a wonderful blog called Tinned Tomatoes, and I have for a long time wandered from recipe to recipe, waiting for the right moment to try one. 


   Lo and behold I came upon a recipe for chocolate chip whoopie pies, which I'd never tasted let alone made. They looked like little flat cakes with filling, which they are. I was quite excited about trying them, but was rather dubious because I didn't have buttermilk (and have yet to meet a real live version in a supermarket) and because I didn't have a whoopie pie tin. However, Jac said they'd turn out fine without the tins, and since they included chocolate chips, for which I have recently discovered a love for, I decided I'd (try and) make them anyway.


   By the way, nope, there was no typo on the title. You really did read "Chocolate Chip Whoopsie Pies" because that's what they are. And that was really "Marshmallow Feeling" because I put a lot of feeling into making them. And licking them. Yeah.

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   I am also (nervous, nervous, nervous!!!! because I am) entering this for Bookmarked Recipes which is hosted Jac. The deadline is 30th July and since this recipe if from Jac's blog, I think it passes for a vegetarian one! I have never, ever entered a food event before, and I'm not sure I'll qualify, but I'll try anyway and hope people won't mind if it's a bit sloppy!


   Read more about the event here.

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Chocolate Chip Whoopsie Pies with Marshmallow Feeling

taken and adapted from Jacqueline of Tinned Tomatoes

[click HERE for original Whoopie Pies recipe]

[click HERE for original Marshmallow filling recipe]

(i) Whoopsie Pies

Ingredients

2 cups plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

125g margarine or butter

1/3 cup castor sugar

1/3 cup soft brown sugar

1 large egg

1/2 cup buttermilk (I used 1/2 cup milk + 1/1 tsp apple vinegar)

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup chocolate chips

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180C (170 for mine).


2. Grease tin or line baking sheet with baking paper.

3. Sift flour, baking powder and baking soda into a bowl. Add salt.

4. Beat butter, castor sugar and brown sugar together until light and fluffy.

5. Add egg and beat until well mixed.

6. Add buttermilk and vanilla, and mix until smooth.

7. Fold in flour mixture, mixing just until well incorporated.

8. Fold in chocolate chips.

9. Scoop dessert spoonfuls into prepared tin.

10. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes or until golden brown and dome-shaped.

11. Cool and jam two pies together with marshmallow feeling.

(ii) Marshmallow Feeling (filling)

Ingredients

2 egg whites

1/2 cup icing sugar

1 tbsp golden syrup

Method

1. Put all ingredients in a heatproof bowl and whisk for about ten minutes over a simmering pot of water.

Make sure the bottom of the bowl doesn't touch the water (I wonder why).

The mixture will be a sort of golden-yellowish and thickens as you whisk it.

2. Remove bowl from the heat and whisk using an electric mixer until it becomes really thick, and has stiff peaks like a meringue.

3. Put all forms of shyness and embarrassment aside and embrace your new feelings. Love it, lick it. It's delicious.

Oh. And don't forget to save some for jamming the whoopsies together. They want some marshmallow love too.

I hope this is what the filling's supposed to look like:

I love this! I'd like to use it on everything!

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Teacher's Notes

   1. I may not have a whoopie tin, but I have two tart tins! It didn't work as well as a real whoopie tin, I guess, but they did help in forming the shape of the base of the pies- although of course some never made it even with all that help and turned out wonky and misshapen! 

   2. When I had put all the ingredients for the marshmallow feeling into the bowl, I took my giant hand whisk and whisked the ingredients together before putting them on the heat. Disaster struck. Three HUGE drops of water fell into the bowl. I had not properly dried the handle. I was dumbstruck. I was afraid the egg whites wouldn't froth up like meringues. They worked out fine though. It was lovely seeing the mixture turn all thick and gooey and marshmallow-y. The colour was so pretty too, opaque white- pure and clean. Lesson: Trust in yourself and don't waste egg whites when you think it won't work out! 

   Oh, and even though I cut down the amount of ingredients from the original recipe, I still had plenty of filling left over. I don't normally hold much for licking fillings, but who can deny marshmallow feelings? 

   3. When the recipe says to use a dessert spoon 'scoop desert spoonfuls' of the batter into the tin, then it means 'dessert spoonfuls'. Don't doubt the recipe and dump a Giant's dessert spoonful' of batter into the tin, because you'll get whoppie pies big enough for a Giant (well, not really but they were a bit thick for jamming together). 

   Which is why I made whoopsie pies instead of whoopie pies. But they taste great, so who cares?

My wonky whoopsie pies

The tart tin I used as a substitute for the whoopie pie pan.
Not sure it worked out too well, but it was okay.

I noticed this cheeky little fella...

So I gave 'im eyes to complete the look!
He's happy and so am I!

Brownie Day Part 2: Banana Brownies

Let's Go Bananas!!!

Pisang/Bananas

   I love bananas. When I was little, I used to be scared of eating raw bananas because the flesh seemed so soft that if they were too ripe, I felt that there would be little maggots in them. Yuck. Let's stop there.


   I have thankfully grownup and am no longer that silly little girl. I love bananas (that's the second time I said that!) I am sometimes overwhelmed by the many different types of bananas that we have in Malaysia. Pisang kebatu, pisang emas, pisang susu, pisang awak, pisang tanduk, pisang raja and many more.


   We had some overripe bananas in the fridge. Pisang kebatu, I think. We fried bananas dipped in batter and had them the day before, but there some left and Mum popped them into the fridge. I looked for recipes for which I could use them, and found this one. I'd just put the peanut butter chocolate brownies into the oven, but I was feeling all hyped up and I felt like baking something else. 


   Two kinds of brownies in one day? Fantastic! We could compare the flavour and texture (yeah, yeah) and see which worked better for our tastebuds. Most importantly, there'd be more to eat!

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Ramblings on the Recipe

You can see the banana chunks. Oh yum.

   It's wonderful what you can discover on the internet. Sometimes, whenever I get frustrated because I didn't have a particular ingredient needed for a particular recipe, I'd Google and then goggle at the vast amount of recipes available on the internet.


   Since we had a lot of chocolate in the house at the moment, I decided to go with this recipe. However, we only had one pack of butter left in the fridge, and I wanted to save that for something special. So I substituted the butter with margarine. I have read that margarine contains more water than butter, and whatnot, but I've grown up with margarine- we used to spread margarine on slices of bread and scatter the top with sugar. It's a lot cheaper than butter too. I also love the smell. If you don't like margarine, go ahead and use butter. No worries.


   The recipe called for 4 bananas, but it didn't say how big they should be, so I dunk in all the leftover bananas that we had (about 5 1/2 medium to small bananas). 


   And... as usual I reduced the amount of sugar. All that chocolate and bananas would contribute a lot to the sweetness, I thought, and I didn't the taste to be overwhelmed bu sugary-sweetness.


   I also used a bigger pan. The recipe suggested an 8 x 8 inch pan, but I used a much bigger one, about . I lowered the temperature to 170C to suit our oven, and started with 50 minutes so that I could decide how lone they needed to be baked. I'm prone to overbaking stuff, which usually results in burnt tops, hoho, so I had to be extra careful.

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THE Recipe

[Click HERE for original recipe]

Ingredients:

350g dark chocolate (or whatever works for you)

250g margarine or butter

4 eggs

5 1/2 medium sized bananas (about 1 1/2 to 2 cups i think)

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup castor sugar

1 tsp cocoa powder

1 tsp baking powder

Method:

1. Preheat over to 180C (170C for my oven). Line a baking pan using baking paper or foil.

2.Melt margarine (or butter) and chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a simmering pot of water.

3. While waiting for the chocolate to melt, mash the bananas and the eggs in a large bowl.

-I whisked the eggs for a bit before putting in the bananas. I used the whisk to mash the bananas. 

At first I thought of whizzing the batter in the blender to really crush the bananas, but I liked the look of the banana bits floating around in the egg batter, and felt that it'd lend texture and more flavour if I left it just like that. 

So I did.

4. Add the flour, sugar, cocoa powder and baking powder into the egg mixture and mix until well incorporated. It'd be a good idea to sift the dry ingredients first (which I didn't do).

5. Pour in the chocolate-and-margarine-or-butter mixture into the batter and mix well.

6. Pop the pan into the oven and bake for 50 minutes to 1 hour, depending on the size of your pan, your oven and how much you want the brownies to be cooked.

I set the oven at 50 minutes, and decided to stop there. 

7. What are you waiting for? Eat! (or take photos first, whatever works for you)

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The RESULT

This is what it looks like, just out of the oven.

   I truly love this recipe! At first it seemed that there was too much batter, so I instead of using an 8 x 8 inch pan I used one that was around 11 x 11 inch. However, it worked quite well and the most important thing is that we had more space to cut, which means more pieces of brownies! 

   I may have underestimated the amount of bananas. I thought I'd put quite a lot in, but maybe the bananas in the original recipe were large sized. You can still taste the bananas though, but if you want more flavour I suggest adding even more bananas.

   The margarine worked really well, I think. Next time I'll try using butter to test the difference. 

   The texture was crumbly and soft and just a little fudgy, which I liked. It was definitely different from the peanut butter chocolate brownies! I'm definitely making this again, hopefully when my sisters come home.

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Go crazy. Please.

   Therefore I suggest you go crazy and make two kinds of brownies like I did- only to see how different the two are. Honest. If you feel like you'll have too much brownies on hand, you can always put them on a nice plate and give some to your neighbours (which I planned to do at first but never did because we had just enough for the 5 of us!)

   When Dad saw the two batches of brownies, he said, "those brownies are going to SK Mulong (the name of his school) tomorrow!" So I packed some of each kind of brownies together with a piece of the victoria sponge (the whole family fasted the day after I baked the sponge so there was still quite a big piece left). Then, I did the same for Abang and Adik, who love taking baked stuff to school to show off to their friends (and share, I suppose, haha).

   So go crazy, if you can, and please the people who love you and you love. If they truly love you, they will eat the brownies whatever they taste like, but they will definitely love you because this recipe really works! 

Brownie Day Part 1: Peanut Butter Chocolate Brownies

Ramblings

   Stonesoup is owned by Jules.


   I love Stonesoup. And I love Jules. She has such a simple philosophy of keeping things simple and fuss-free. She has lots and lots of recipes that uses only 5 ingredients, or even less. For someone who cannot, at the moment, afford to spend a lot of money on buying baking ingredients, Jules's recipes are nearly exactly what I need.


   Nearly because so far I haven't had much hand in preparing the main meals in my house. I only make things fit for dessert (unless you eat cake for breakfast, lunch, dinner, supper...).


   And nearly because some of her recipes (or at least the ones that I'd like to try) uses whipping cream. I have recently discovered that many supermarkets in Malaysia (or at least the ones that I have been to) such as Tesco and Giant sell whipping cream in the dairy section, but my oh my how expensive they are. 1 litre for arounr RM 18.00 to RM 26.00! Gulp. I'm afraid I'll have to wait 'til I've started working before I can even think of buying them.


   Other than that, I just love reading what Jules has to say on her site. She writes about incredibly interesting stuff. Actually, it's just better if you head over to her site and see for yourself. But I would like to say that I think she's a wonderful person because it seems that she just loves sharing knowledge without asking for much in return. Her free e-Books are delightful. Truly.


   What are you waiting for? Hope over to StoneSoup and have a good time reading the recipes and everything else besides!

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Ramblings on the Recipe

Peanut butter brownies

   Today, I made two kinds of brownies. The first was made using one of Jules's recipes. If you like brownies that are really, really fudgy and squidgy, then this recipe is for you!


   I modified the recipe a bit to suit my taste and also to suit whatever ingredients that I had at the moment. There happened to be a jar of peanut butter which had, I noticed, been sitting all alone on the counter. When I opened it, I discovered that there was about a third of the contents left. The whole thing, including the plastic jar, weighed 150g, which is the amount of peanut butter needed for the recipe. What the heck? I thought. Whatever works, Mayah!


   Jules noted that all-purpose flour would work just as well, but since we had rice flour I decided to follow the recipe on this. I think rice flour gives the extra squidgy-ness to the texture? I don't know. Next time I'll try using all-purpose flour and see what happens.


   I also reduced the amount of sugar because I have, out of a lot of experience, found that most recipes use too much sugar for my liking. I don't know how this affects the overall product, but like I said, whatever works!


   I was also happy because Mum had just bough a new batch of eggs, and man are they large!


   Note: Please check the original recipe for the temperature setting. I often reduce the temperature for my oven because it tends to get too hot. You know your oven. Hoho.

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More Ramblings on the Recipe

This recipe uses Halal ingredients.

It is also gluten and dairy-free.

  

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THE Recipe

Peanut Butter Chocolate Brownies

[Click HERE to see the original recipe]

Ingredients: 

130-150g smooth peanut butter

200g brown sugar

2 eggs

50g cocoa powder

75g rice flour

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 150C. Grease and line baking pan ( I used a 8x8 inch pan) with baking paper (which I forgot to do).

2. Beats eggs. Add sugar. Beat. Add the peanut butter. Beat until well mixed.

3. Fold in flour and cocoa powder. Mix until just incorporated.

4. Pour into prepared pan. Bake for 30 minutes. Test with a skewer or toothpick, if it comes out slightly moist  then it's ready.

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The Ugly but nonetheless Delicious Truth 

   Even after setting my oven to a lower temperature and baking the brownies for exactly 30 minutes, I seemed to have overbaked them (which is something I often do). Or not. 

   The truth is whenever I bake something chocolaty or brown-in-colour, I am often confused because I don't know whether the cake/brownies/cookies are properly and thoroughly cooked because I can't see it by the colour! Which is funny because most of the things I've baked so far involve chocolate or cocoa powder. Oh well. 

   Anyway, even though they were a little around the edges, the brownies were perfectly sticky, squidgy and fudgy. The funny thing is that it was so difficult to pry the brownies from the edge of the pan, and quite as difficult to pry them off the bottom, but once they cleared the pan, they truly cleared the pan! I expected to see a lot of crumbs on the pan but there wasn't much. 

   Verdict: It's a lovely recipe, and my youngest brother loves it. However, I personally would be able to finish only one slice at one seating. Maybe it's because it takes some effort (for me anyway) to chew it. The taste is good enough, but maybe other people would like a more peanut buttery flavour? Next time I'm going to use chunky peanut butter. I wanted to add some crushed peanuts actually, to add to the texture, but we didn't have them. Maybe next time. Sprinkling them on top of the batter would be great. Yeah.

   Thank, Jules! My brothers give your brownies 9 out of 10!