The Food Site

Do you ever get that sudden chocolate cookie craving which simply must be fulfilled, otherwise you feel all so irritable and down and depressed?

Well, I get that A LOT. Not because I am a very depressing person. Or that I eat loads of comfort food. But it is usually due to that time of the month when I’d have a sudden high craving for carbs and it would definitely be chocolate! And cookies. I am a cookie monster through and through.

Anyway, due to the recent melamine scare, I am staying off store-bought cookies for a while. Also, I can never find any GOOD commercial chocolate chip cookies. Most are total rip-off. Either it’s too sweet or just plain un-chocolatey. And too crunchy or grainy with barely any flavours too. Like biting into baked sand or something. Blearghh.

No wonder there’s this saying that some things are best done ourselves. It must definitely refer to baking cookies! To satisfy my cookie monster craving for some chocolate cookies, this is what I made..

Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

Trust me, it is as good as it looks and so chocolatey, the cookies didn’t last long before it was gulped down by the cookie monster who baked these, Mr Picky and wonders of wonders, The Food Critic! Yep, this is an all-time favourite at home. Hah! It’s bye-bye Chipsmore and hello, Foong’s Cookies!

Anyway, I got this recipe from Baking Bites (whose site I simply love as she has SO many great baking recipes to chew on…) and did some minor modifications. Very, very minor modifications this time around.

So, here’s the recipe…

Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups flour

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup butter

1 cup soft brown sugar (I know, I know, I use A LOT of brown sugar in everything!)

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp coffee essence

1 cup chocolate chips

1/2 cup chocolate buttons

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 F / 180 C. Line cookie pan with baking paper.

3. Place the butter and brown sugar in another bowl

4. Cream the butter and sugar

5. Add the egg and beat it in thoroughly

6. Add the vanilla essence

7. Then, add in the coffee essence and mix well

**Note: You will notice that I have a fork in the mixing bowl…that’s because I use good old fashion ‘manual power’ for all my mixing with only a fork as I don’t have a mixer….yet! But you can use the electric mixer, it will definitely be faster.**

8. Gradually stir in the dry ingredients

9. Mix the ingredients well and the mixture should become like this

10. Throw in the chocolate chips

11. Being a typical chocoholic, I had to add more chocolate so I added chocolate buttons too

12. After stirring it all in, the batter is now ready

13. Drop the batter on the cookie pan, about half a tablespoon size each

14. Bake the cookies at 180C for about 10 minutes or up to 15 minutes (depending on your oven).

15. When it is done, it should look like this

These cookies are a cross between crunchy and chewy so it is a perfect combination of chocolates with a rich, soft-crunchy texture. And I am glad I added the chocolate buttons as it has given these cookies some chocolatey creaminess due to it’s half-melted texture inside the cookies. Yummy!

Here's another look at the double chocolate chip cookies

I love these so much, I think I am going to bake it again pretty soon!

Anyway, I also tried out another cookie recipe (yes, it also has chocolate in it) and I will post it up as the Cookie Monster Bakes Part 2 soon. Wait for it!

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First, before I start, let me write something about The Food Critic aka My Personal Chef and his hate-hate relationship with desserts.

He hates most desserts. Cakes, pies, cookies and yes *gasp* even chocolates. Which explains his difficulty in putting on weight.

So, each time I decided to bake something, I’d end up eating the whole lot. Every. Single. Time. Which explains my difficulty in losing weight.

And then, there were some changes. He suddenly starts eating some of the desserts I made. Maybe it’s because of the frosty silence I had whenever I offered him some piping hot from the oven baked stuff smelling so heavenly that nobody except him could resist it and he said no. Or maybe it’s because some of the baked desserts I’ve been making suits his weird dessert tastes. I dunno. But when I made this…

Apple Crisp

He turned it down.

“I don’t eat apple pies” was his response. Despite the heavenly aroma of baked apples in the air. Despite the ultra-tantalising apple crisp I placed in front of him. Despite it NOT being an apple pie but an apple crisp which is very different, involving different ingredients.

I was frustrated. Annoyed. I had a slightly miffed, hurt expression but it went unnoticed.

So, what the heck. Might as well eat it all by myself. It’d probably take me days to do it. Maybe Mr Picky might like it too but he’s a toddler and he can’t eat much.

Then, one day I came back and found a huge chunk missing from the dish. Yep, The Food Critic raided the fridge and took a piece and then, deciding that he liked it, took another! HAH. His comment?

“This is the first apple pie I actually liked!” in an incredulous tone.

Never mind that it is actually apple crisp and not pie. At least he liked it!

So, here’s the apple crisp that The Food Critic liked:

Apple Crisp Recipe

Apple Crisp

Ingredients

3 Fuji apples, peeled and cored and sliced

Note: I used Fuji because we had a lot of these and couldn’t finish it before it spoils but I guess you could use other types of apples

4 - 5 tbsp butter

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup flour

1 cup oatmeal (instant)

a pinch of salt

1/2 cup almonds (or other nuts, if you prefer)

2 tbsp golden syrup (or maple syrup if you like)

1 cup chocolate chips

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees (Celsius).

2. Arrange the apple slices on the baking pan

3. Place butter and sugar in a bowl

4. Either use a mixer or like me, manually cream the butter and sugar using any utensil you are comfortable with.

5. Gradually add in the flour and mix well to make sure it is all combined and there were no lumps of dry flour.

6. Then gradually add in the oatmeal

7. Make sure you chop your almonds to about this size.

8. Then add it into the flour mix and stir well

9. Mix in half of the chocolate chips

10. Then press the crumbly dough on top of the prepared sliced apples in the baking pan.

11. Randomly dribble the golden syrup on top

12. Then sprinkle the rest of the chocolate chips and some oatmeal on top.

13. It should look like this before you put it into the oven

14. Bake it for 40 minutes at 180 degrees (Celsius) or until it turns brown and the apples are cooked and soft (just like the picture underneath the Apple Crisp recipe heading)

And you get your delicious apple crisp with tender-soft baked apples with crunchy, crumbly top

The best thing about this is that, you can also…

Enjoy it with some ice cream!

Needless to say, this whole pan of apple crisp finished within a few days! Oh, by the way, I realised that this is a favourite Thanksgiving dessert too but we don’t celebrate thanksgiving here but it is a great way to get rid of apples we can’t possibly finish by eating it raw!

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