Operasi “Choc Chip Biscuit”: PASS!

Yes, you saw it right. I baked!!!!!!

I was inspired by my friends in mYoga. They were in a baking frenzy past few weeks… comparing recipes and baking tips wtf.

Of course I got damn kiasu because I felt damn left out in the midst of their baking-powder-oven-temperature-flour-milk-and-sugar talk.

Seriously, they were as good as speaking GREEK to me.

So as soon as Mr. Ho came back for the Raya weekend last month, I managed to convince him to help me bake!

And baked we did……. “CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES”

Yep, I chose to bake the ONE THING that won’t go wrong. If anything went wrong with it, consperm I should just marry a chef for a husband –__-"

Anyway, back to the baking process!!!!

Before you start anything, be sure to preheat your oven to 375F (190C).

Then, prepare ingredients and lay them nice and ready on your kitchen counter within easy reach…

….. just so you won’t gelabah

….. and get all panicky when you need an ingredient and its not there

….. I mean, that’s just silly and you’ll end up looking real clumsy and like a total noob

…… it SO did NOT happen to me

*shifty eyes*

Next, WASH YOUR HANDS. Veli the importance wtf.

(Now you know what a hygienic cook I am, please eat my food…)

After washing your hands, get your co-chef to prepare everything on the table, while you set up the mood for some successful baking… in this case, I made a playlist of chillaxing music and played it on my lappie.

Uiseh.

Next, comes the butter.

226grams of unsalted butter is all that you need.

That’s bout almost 1 standard block of butter… But for pictures’ sake, here’s me, measuring the butter 😀

Pro boh?

This is how much 226grams of butter look like…

After measuring, cream the  butter…… and by creaming the butter……….. I have no idea what this means actually, but I assumed we just gotta “beat” the butter with the electric mixer till its creamy? Logic and common sense rite?

Next, get your 150grams of fine granulated white sugar and 160grams of light brown sugar and throw ‘em into your creamed butter…

OK, at this point, I forgot to take picture of me adding in the sugar into the butter… so time to use your imagination, lazy people.

Beat the butter and sugar mixture till its “fluffy”… again, I have no idea how is a fluffy mixture supposed to look like… I was half expecting feathers to fly out the bowl.

Anyhow, I just trusted my gut feelings and Dan’s (apparently) expert opinions on baking on when the mixture was finally lookin’ nice and fluffed.

Then came the eggs (2 eggs to be exact), beaten one at a time…

When beating them, be sure to beat well, before adding the next.

Thereafter, add in 1 and a half teaspoon of pure vanilla extract into the egg mixture…

Blend well…

… and it should look like this…

At this point, you can dip your finger into the mixture and lick it off afterwards (if you’re not too fussed about the fact that there’re raw eggs in there)…

Daniel FORCED me to have some.

But it was nice I have to say 😀

Anyways, put the butter+sugar+egg+vanilla mixture aside.

Grab another mixing bowl, and its time for some FLOUR ACTION.

Off topic, do you pronounce FLOUR as “flar” or “flower”? I pronounced it “flower” and I always get corrected!!!

Why la??

Its correct wat! Po-tay-to, Po-tah-to. Same same! wtf –___-

While I’m at it, the CORRECT way to pronounce “HERB” is with a silent “H”. So technically, its “ERB”. I’m serious!!!

And the right way to pronounce “SALMON” is with a silent “L”.

*smart alec face*

nataliechow.com should start charging some English tuition fees wtf.

BACK TO BAKING!!!

Combine 295grams of all purpose flour, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, and 1/2 teaspoon of salt in a separate bowl.

Here’s Dan doing the honour…

After that, pour all the dry ingredients into the first butter mixture and beat till its well mixed.

About halfway through the beating process, we added in the chocolate ships!!!!

My favourite part is here!!!

The mixer mixture looked damn awesome right??

By right, was just supposed to put in like 270grams of semisweet choc chips, but we ended up pouring in the whole packet of Nestle Toll House, which was just about a bit over 270grams, but it definitely made the cookies better in the end (in our opinion… we gotta be biased of course) 😛

If at any case you feel that your dough is too soft, cover it and put it into the fridge till its firm (approx. 30 min).

We had no idea if our dough was soft or firm, plus we were impatient (ok, it was me… I was impatient)… so we put it on the baking tray immediately.

Before that, while you’re doing all the nice exciting baking action, get your co-chef to do the boring crap… like laying the baking sheets on the tray 😀

 

When you’re finally ready to put the dough onto the tray…

…Be careful to use a teaspoon and scoop out little balls of no more than 20 cents (otherwise your cookies may come out too big and un-cute).

…Be sure to also not put the little balls of dough too close to each other, because when it expands in the oven, they will end up sticking together. Then your cookies will come out looking super noob (like Dan’s first batch). Hohohohoho.

When you’re done, put the the tray into the oven and leave it in there for about 12-14 min. But in our opinion, scrap the timing… just bake till you see the the cookies are golden brown around the edges.

This is because, our first tray batch turned out pretty soft when we followed the timing… Literally we were chewing on uncooked cookies.

But we were still looking at each other and saying “WAHHH DAMN KAO NICE” because we refused to admit there was anything wrong with soft, uncooked cookies _|_

So what do you when your cookies are nicely baking in the oven?

You do this…

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…and wait.

I concluded this while waiting for the cookies to be done…

Baking=testing my patience=dealing with autistic+ADHD children=my work.

So technically… Baking=work.

-__-

Gotta say the cookies looked really nice while baking though 😀

And when they’re out… they looked even BETTER!!!!!!!!!!

Picture above was our first batch. They looked a lil too bit because our dough scoops were too big.

And yes, those were the soft uncooked ones.

But hey, looks pretty good no???? 😀

Trust me, the following batches were THE bomb. Like many things in life, baking is all about learning from mistakes.

… and when there’re two chefs baking at the same time, it takes a LOT of compromise. And believe me, I have a problem with compromising….

…Because I’m spoilt like that. I’m not proud of it, and I’m trying to change. So maybe I should bake more.

If only more ppl will trust that my baking won’t kill them 😦

If there’s another thing I’ve learn about baking, is that for some things in life… you just HAVE to trust your gut instincts.

Sometimes you do things, and you have no idea why you do them. When confronted, all you can muster up is…. “I just have this feeling”.

Sometimes you JUST gotta trust that feeling of yours.

And I have a feeling right now…

… That some things are meant to be (I love you, B)

This concludes my baking adventure!

Till next time…

TATA!!!!

NatC.