bittersweet chocolate dipped macaroons

bittersweet chocolate dipped macaroons

bittersweet chocolate dipped macaroons bittersweet chocolate dipped macaroons bittersweet chocolate dipped macaroons bittersweet chocolate dipped macaroons bittersweet chocolate dipped macaroons bittersweet chocolate dipped macaroons bittersweet chocolate dipped macaroons bittersweet chocolate dipped macaroons bittersweet chocolate dipped macaroons bittersweet chocolate dipped macaroons bittersweet chocolate dipped macaroons

Snow days. You probably heard all about it on the news: massive snowstorm batters the east coast, end of the world as we know it, we’ll never be able to leave our houses again, Fox News makes outrageously irresponsible and and misinformed statements about global warming, yadda yadda yadda. What it meant for me was that I got to leave work at 1 p.m. on a Wednesday. It was amazing; it felt like skipping out of school at recess. And what was even better than the coming home early was that there was ample time to bake. So I pulled out Elinor Klivans’ wonderful Big Fat Cookies, looking for an inspiring idea for cookies. I’ve made many of the recipes from Klivans’ book before, but not in recent years, as my copy lives at my mom’s house. But I was wanting to make some of those recipes again, so a few weeks ago, I went out and bought a new copy, and I’ve since spent a bit of time reacquainting myself with the aforementioned big, fat cookies. And so, on that snowy, blustery afternoon, I chose a recipe for chocolate-dipped macaroons, because, well, macaroons are awesome. Let’s get to it, shall we?

oh, macaroons.

shredded coconut

I made a quick list of ingredients and went, perhaps foolishly, back out into the snow to the grocery store (luckily, I had Kenan at my side, for moral support and also to make sure I didn’t disappear under a snowdrift). Somehow, we survived the muck and arrived back at the apartment, armed with baking supplies and treats from Champion, ready for some snow day baking time.

These coconut-chocolate babies are lovely and simple. First, I mixed together some sweetened shredded coconut, sweetened condensed milk, salt, and vanilla and almond extracts. Ms. Klivans’ recipe calls for a surprising amount of almond extract (1 1/2 teaspoons), which, even as someone who adores the stuff and uses it every chance she can get, I found a bit excessive. But I decided to trust the lady’s tastebuds and adjust things later if need be. In any case, then I whipped a large egg white with cream of tartar until it formed soft peaks, added some sugar, and whipped again until it formed those oh-so-desirable shiny, stiff peaks. Then I folded the whites into the coconut and we were ready for business. I dropped the cookies in large spoonfuls onto a lined baking sheet and popped them in the oven. Roughly 20 minutes later, they had puffed up a bit and gotten ever so slightly golden brown. I let them cool completely and then did the chocolate dip thing, melting bittersweet chocolate with a tiny bit of oil to make it shiny and then allowing it to cool just enough to thicken slightly. Then I dipped the bottoms of my cookie friends into the chocolate and flipped them upside down, allowing the chocolate to set completely.

holding hands, eating macaroons.

mounds of coconut

Even though we wanted to keep our little mounds of coconut happiness to ourselves, we decided it would be more neighborly (and better, in the end, for the well-being of our stomachs) if we brought them downstairs to share with Coach n’ Boots. And they were spectacular: chewy, a bit crispy on the outside, moist, and just generally delectable. I think my doubts about the amount of almond were correct, however: the macaroons were delicious, but the taste of almond was just a bit overwhelming. My other concern about these guys is the amount of processed stuff that goes into them. I have no desire to know what sweetened shredded coconut actually is, but I’m sure making it involves lots of chemicals and processing and other generally icky stuff. And I have similar concerns with sweetened condensed milk. All of this is not to denigrate the recipe; it’s fantastic, and they’re probably the best macaroons I’ve ever had. I’m just saying that I’ll probably want to return to the macaroon, to see if I can’t make something just as moist and incredible with regular, unsweetened, unprocessed shredded coconut and, you know, without the canned milk.

But for now, throw caution to the wind and luxuriate in some awesome macaroons. I mean, it’s certainly still winter outside, and how else are we all going to keep our winter padding on?

macaroons!

baked macaroons

make macaroons to your hearts delight and get yr recipes, over this-a-way

chocolate pie!

chocolate pie!

chocolate pie! chocolate pie! chocolate pie! chocolate pie! chocolate pie! chocolate pie! chocolate pie! chocolate pie! chocolate pie! chocolate pie! chocolate pie! chocolate pie!

Chocolate pie, my friends. I think that’s pretty much all one needs to know. Last weekend was super duper cold in this city, and the cold always ups my craving for comfort foods. We had a small get-together on Friday night, wherein Boots made delicious, delectable pizza, and I pulled out a recipe for a chocolate souffle pie from the good folks over at chocolate bar. I’d made it before, a few years ago, and had nothing but fond memories of sinking my teeth into this rich, chocolatey, melty pie; I was certainly ready to relive the experience.

mixings and fixings.

crusty guy

chocolate bar’s recipe is fantastic, and fantastically simple: a basic sweet pie crust is filled with a rich chocolate pudding-esque liquid and then baked for about an hour. The result is a pie that is creamy, indulgent and messy (well, at least messy if you don’t chill it, which I don’t). The only thing that’s even remotely a to-do is the crust, which really is only time-intensive insofar as it involves a modicum of advance planning. I picked up some ingredients on my way home from work on Friday and set to work straight away, so the crust would have ample time to chill before any baking happened. In my food processor, I mixed together some flour, sugar, salt and butter, and then added iced water until the dough started to clump together. Then I turned it out onto a piece of parchment paper, wrapped it up and placed it in the chill box for a few hours. Then it was downstairs to Coach and Boots’ place to see what was happening.

I’ve mentioned Boots several times in this here blog-thing, but what I don’t believe I’ve written about are her prodigious cooking skills. Seriously, the lady cooks a mean dinner. And what’s even more remarkable about that particular talent of hers is her ability to look in her fridge, see five or six seemingly (at least to the untrained (i.e., my) eye) disparate and non-complementary ingredients and magically create an awesome, hearty, tasty meal. What’s more, she never seems to make the exact same thing twice. Seriously, I may be pretty good at this whole baking thing, but Boots is an artist when it comes to meal preparation. All of which is to say that her meals are looked forward to and enjoyed with relish on the part of Kenan and myself. Which is why we went knocking on her door on Friday night, bearing pie dough and coyly asking what was happening for dinner. And sure enough, Boots was in the middle of chopping up vegetables and rolling out pizza dough, and Coach was breaking out a new tin of white truffle oil (holy moly). It just so happened that Chris and Jodi were coming over, and there was more than enough pizza to go around. Hooray for comfort food.

high time for pie time.

slicey guy

Everyone chipped in and helped make the pizza, and it was lovely and amazing, and we ate each small, delectable pie with joy in our bellies. After the pizza baking was done and we had sated our appetites for cheesy goodness, I took the pie dough out of the fridge and cleared some space to roll it out. This particular crust recipe is very dry, so things got a bit crumbly and stuff, but it was easy enough to roll out and patch together where it was needed. Then I placed the dough in the pie pan, crimped the edges and set it in the fridge to cool a bit before baking. When the crust had firmed up sufficiently, I popped it in the oven to pre-bake, and about 20 minutes later, the crust had turned a light tan color and smelled of butter and sugar. I got a bit concerned about halfway through the baking process because the bottom of the crust had started to sweat and looked greasy (due to the high ratio of fat to lean material), but it dried out and baked up nicely in the end. After I’d nestled the baked crust on the window ledge to cool its heels until baking time, I was ready to move on to the filling.

And, as luck would have it, the filling is just as reassuringly and heartwarmingly simple to prepare as the crust. First, I mixed some gigantic eggs with a bit of flour, some sugar, vanilla extract, and salt. Then I melted chocolate, butter and cream and mixed the chocolate into the egg mixture. I poured the whole lot into the pie crust, but there was still quite a bit left, so I poured the rest into muffin molds so we could have mini muffin friends. I know; really awesome.

After the pie had baked for about an hour, the top was puffy and ever so slightly cracked and smelled of chocolate and butter in the best way. And it was so, so very delicious. The crust was flaky and buttery and tender, and the filling was luxurious and sweet – all in all, absolutely amazing. Granted, it’s also very rich, so be careful when eating large amounts of it if you want to avoid a tummy ache, but otherwise, it’s a home run.

So make some pie, before spring creeps up on you and leaves you terrified that you’ll actually be expected to leave your apartment.

melty chocolate pie

yummy guy

get a recipe and a tummy ache, below the fold

fussy chestnut cake

fussy chestnut cake

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Apparently, I was in the mood for some fancy-pants baking this past weekend. Like, multiple-day, million-step, fussy-as-can-be baking. As I mentioned in my last post, I’d been fantasizing recently about chestnuts. I just love those little guys so much; they’re sweet, they’re meaty, and I feel like they’re a bit underutilized in the baking world. I mean, sure, one always hears about chestnuts going in turkey stuffing or whatnot, and of course there are always those dudes selling them on the street, but I don’t think I see chestnut desserts quite as often as would be desirable. So I started poking around for something inspiring to do with chestnuts, and lo, I found one over at the Queen of Domesticity’s place: a chestnut cake filled with chestnut pastry cream, frosted with a bittersweet ganache, and finally topped again with a chocolate-armagnac glaze. Holy moly.

can you say fussy?

fussy eggwhites

Okay, so let me get one thing out there: I’m not the hugest fan of Martha Stewart, but I think she’s awesome at what she does, and generally, her recipes are really quite outstanding. So when I saw a recipe for chestnut cake on her site, I thought, “well, this looks a bit complicated, but certainly worth a try.” We were even planning to go to dinner at Kenan’s dad’s house on Sunday, which gave me at least somewhat of a reason to get this adventurous on what otherwise would have been a fairly sleepy weekend. So, on Saturday morning, I went off to the grocery store to get supplies for this chestnut cake to end all cakes. First on my shopping list was a jar of whole roasted chestnuts, which rang in at a whopping $13. My original thought had been to get fresh chestnuts and roast and shell them myself, but alas, they were nowhere to be found, at least at my usual grocery haunts. Which left me stuck buying an outrageously expensive thing of nuts. At any rate, I also got a bit of armagnac (a type of brandy similar to cognac but made using a different type of still), milk, cream, eggs, and butter.

And then it was time to get started. First step: make a chestnut puree. This involves simmering some chestnuts, half a vanilla bean and some milk until the chestnuts soak up a lot of the liquid and everything cooks down. Then the mixture is strained and pureed until it comes out to about the consistency of a thick hummus. I tasted a bit of it, and it’s seriously, outrageously delicious. It’s sweet, it’s nutty, and I wanted to spread it on toast. So after that was done, make a pastry cream using the aforementioned chestnut puree: whisk some yolks together with sugar, add corn starch and some chestnut stuff, heat up some milk, temper the yolks with the milk, pour everything back into the pan, heat it until it comes to just under a boil, strain it and then let it hang out in an ice bath until fully cool. When those two things were done and I had cleaned everything up (I think I managed to use every mixing bowl in my possession at least twice), I called it quits for the day.

The following afternoon, I started in on the cake. Ms. Stewart’s recipe requested a nine-inch pan but didn’t specify how deep. Because I knew the cake was supposed to be cup into three layers, I figured she meant a springform with thick sides. But all I had was a ten-inch springform, so I threw caution to the wind and used two regular eight-inch pans and cut each of them into two layers, thus creating a four-layer cake. Take that, fussy recipe. So anyway, first, I sifted together the dry ingredients. Then I scraped out the seeds from half a vanilla bean pod and mixed it with some granulated sugar. Next came the butter, which is whipped with the sugar until it gets pale and fluffy, as per usual. Then the egg yolks, and then the flour mixture in three parts, alternating with the rest of the chestnut puree and a bit of milk. Then I whipped five egg whites with some sugar until they formed medium-stiff, glossy peaks, and folded that into the other mess. The batter is pretty thick, as these things go: almost like the batter for a tea cake. Then I baked the suckers until they puffed at the top and turned a golden brown, which took about an hour. While the cakes were baking, I whipped up the armagnac simple syrup, which would be coated on the cake layers later. There was still much more to come, but there wasn’t really much I could do to assemble the cake until we got to Kenan’s dad’s place, so I wrapped everything up and we left for Manhattan.

fun times, eating times

fussy preparation

Over on the Upper East Side, I sliced the cakes into two layers each and coated them with armagnac syrup. Then I stacked the layers up, topping each one with a layer of pastry cream, and then let the whole lot hang out in the fridge for a while. And then we shared an amazing dinner with Kenan’s family, and, after too much wine and far too much food, it was time to do the rest of the cake. I scurried back to the kitchen and got to work on the whipped frosting. I simmered some heavy cream and then poured it over bitter sweet chocolate and whipped it until it got fluffy. Then I spread it over the cake, let it sit for a few minutes and got started on the glaze while the frosting was setting. I simmered more cream, poured it over more chocolate, let it stand to allow the chocolate to melt, mixed the stuff together, added some armagnac, and then drizzled the whole mess over the cake.

The thing look fantastic: a towering mountain of chocolate and chestnuts, all shiny and aromatic and lovely. I was very, very excited to dig into it. And… I was not entirely thrilled. Sure, the taste of chestnut was great, and the frosting and glaze were delicious, but the cake itself was a bit dry. Kenan’s sister pointed out to me that the texture was not unlike angel food cake, which I think is true. I mean, I don’t have any problem with angel food cake, but there was something a bit chewy about this particular cake that I wasn’t too happy about. Don’t get me wrong; it was certainly a good cake, but it wasn’t great, and I really don’t think it was worth so many hours of preparation and so much fuss to prepare. It also didn’t really seem to be worth the money: two sticks of butter, a lot of whole milk, lots of heavy cream, 14 ounces of baking chocolate, a jar of chestnuts, and armagnac. It is, however, very, very impressive, and not too shabby if you’re willing to put all the work into it. But for myself, I think next time I might do something more straightforward, like a chestnut pudding – perhaps using some of the chestnut puree, which is outstanding, in a more standard pudding or custard recipe.

And that was that. Not the best in the whole world, but still worth the try. Have at it, if you’re up to a challenge.

chesnut cake with chocolate-armagnac glaze.

fussy sauce

get fussy and get a recipe, after the jump

gingerbread pudding with almond cream sauce.

gingerbread pudding with almond cream sauce.

gingerbread pudding with almond cream sauce. gingerbread pudding with almond cream sauce. gingerbread pudding with almond cream sauce. gingerbread pudding with almond cream sauce. gingerbread pudding with almond cream sauce. gingerbread pudding with almond cream sauce. gingerbread pudding with almond cream sauce. gingerbread pudding with almond cream sauce. gingerbread pudding with almond cream sauce. gingerbread pudding with almond cream sauce. gingerbread pudding with almond cream sauce. gingerbread pudding with almond cream sauce. gingerbread pudding with almond cream sauce. gingerbread pudding with almond cream sauce. gingerbread pudding with almond cream sauce.

A couple of weeks ago, Kenan and I were over at Boots and Coach’s place, enjoying a nice dinner. Afterward, while we were digesting and enjoying some quality bonding time with the sofa, I started leafing through a few cookbooks I had brought over to plan for my next baking adventure. Looking over my shoulder, Boots noticed a recipe for steamed gingerbread pudding and asked, coyly, if I could make something similar for her half-birthday, which fell the following week. I said yes whole-heartedly. I mean, I probably hadn’t heard anybody mention half-birthdays since middle school, but I find something charming about the idea that people in their mid-twenties can still get excited about (and celebrate, and bake for) un-birthdays. So we set the (half-)birthday celebration for last Friday, and I started researching.

cake or pudding?

gingerbread

So first of all, let’s clarify that steamed pudding is not what Americans generally think of as pudding: in Britain, steamed, boiled and baked puddings generally refer to a cakey type of dessert, rather than something custardy or otherwise milk-based. So when you hear someone refer to a steamed pudding, think cake, not cream. Steamed puddings are made from a thin batter which is placed in a sealed container (or a pan covered tightly with foil) and then either baked in a water bath or boiled on the stovetop in a large pot with a steamer rack, depending on the technique. The moisture from the water allows the pudding to stay incredibly moist while at the same time baking up to a nice, fluffy consistency. I’d never done one of these guys before, so I was excited to give them a try. I’d also been thinking for a while about doing something cozy and specifically wintry, and gingerbread definitely fits that bill.

My problem with most ginger-based desserts, however, is that they’re a bit lackluster: sweet, not quite spicy enough and seemingly lacking anything substantial to say for themselves. I like ginger things with a nice little bite to them. I’m not talking about something so kicky it’ll knock your socks off, but I want a little bit of heat: a reminder that I’m eating something with an actual spice in it. Armed with those considerations, I set off to look for an appropriate recipe. And really, I wasn’t quite satisfied with anything I found. Each recipe was either too bland, or too full of weird ingredients, or otherwise not so awesome. But I found one that seemed decent, so I decided to go with it, though I ended up using it as more of a general guide than a specific recipe.

ginger up

molasseshoney

On the night of the celebration, Kenan and I headed downstairs to Boots and Coach’s place (they’ve moved into our building; this becomes relevant later on). Boots was making pizza for dinner, so both of us got started on our respective tasks. But as I went to preheat the oven, I realized that Boots was going to have to use said oven for pizza, which would preclude my using it for gingerbread. So I went upstairs and preheated our oven, hoping that I wouldn’t spill the cake all over the stairs when I took it up to bake it or, you know, burn our apartment down. Then, back downstairs, I got started on mixing up the pudding. First, I melted some butter and set it aside to chill out. Next it was time to mix together the dry ingredients: some flour, baking soda, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and, of course, ginger. I whisked three eggs with some brown sugar and then the melted better until the stuff got light and fluffy. Then I mixed some blackstrap molasses (yum!) with honey, hot water, and some very finely chopped fresh ginger. Then I mixed everything together, alternating dry and wet ingredients, and voila! The thing was ready to steam. I hauled the pan upstairs, placed it in a water bath, covered everything with foil, and popped it in the oven for about 40 minutes. And when it came out, oh man, it was fluffy and a nice dark brown and smelled like everything that’s amazing about winter. Now it was time to let the cake cool off a bit and prepare the sauce.

I had elaborate plans for the sauce to go with this cake: I wanted to do something with chestnuts, and I was really interested in making a nice caramel sauce and then mixing in some candied ginger or lemon zest. But this time, owing to laziness and a dearth of the appropriate ingredients, I kept things simple, hoping that the spices in the cake would shine through. I heated up some heavy cream on the stove, whisked it a bit, stirred in a little brown sugar, and finally added some almond butter. I cooked it down for a few minutes, and it was ready to go. And the combination of the sauce and the cake was delicious, and spicy, and creamy, and rich as hell, just as such things should be. There was some debate about what should be the proper ratio of sauce to cake (Coach n’ Boots wanted the whole slice dipped in the sauce and then slathered with more; Kenan preferred a less saucy gingerbread), but everyone agreed that the pair went together splendidly. Certainly a perfect thing for a wintry evening, and for a celebration.

gingerbread puddin’.

sauced

get a recipe and line your tummy with winter happiness, after the jump

chocolate chip cookies.

chocolate chip cookies.

chocolate chip cookies. chocolate chip cookies. chocolate chip cookies. chocolate chip cookies. chocolate chip cookies. chocolate chip cookies. chocolate chip cookies. chocolate chip cookies. chocolate chip cookies. chocolate chip cookies. chocolate chip cookies. chocolate chip cookies. chocolate chip cookies. chocolate chip cookies.

A few weeks ago, my good friend Hiro wrote to me with a desperate plea for some advice on chocolate chip cookies. She recently moved to Denmark, and is having trouble replicating the crispygooeychewy texture that is so desirable in these enigmatic little mounds of dough and chocolate. Always eager to take on a challenge, I assured her that I would do some research and come up with a good recipe, along with an at least pseudo-scientific explanation of why (and which) things can go wrong when whipping up a batch of these suckers.

My journey into the hows and whys of chocolate chip cookies began with a perusal of several articles and lists dedicated to finding the best chocolate chip cookies, whether in a recipe or from a purveyor of baked goods. From the Times, I got a basic best cookie practices education. I perused a list of “New York’s best” chippy wonders over at New York Mag. And I browsed through countless recipes on Food Network, Epicurious and All Recipes. I came up with a list of things that are necessary for a good cookie, and along the way, I developed my own recipe. Shall we?

chocolate chip science.

flour

1. Chill yer dough. Nearly every article and recipe I read said always to chill cookie dough. The suggested length of time for this chilling out process varied from source to source, with most of them falling in the 10 – 36 hour range. The system I worked out is to at least chill the dough overnight (i.e., around 12 hours), but preferably 24 hours for optimum awesomeness. The chill time allows the flour to absorb all the goodness from the liquid ingredients, particularly the eggs. You see, the liquid in eggs moves particularly slowly, and the butter in cookie dough basically acts as a shield blocking liquid from being absorbed into the flour, so it takes some time for the goodness in the eggs and the other stuff to permeate into the flour. Chilling also allows any gluten that developed in the mixing process to relax, resulting in a less tough cookie. Allowing the dough to rest for a day also creates a better consistency. And finally, chilling hardens the fat in the dough (in this case, butter), and when you bake the dough, the fat releases steam, contributing to puffiness and flakiness (flakiness is more relevant with pastry, but you get the picture). So yes, chilling the dough for so long takes away the instant satisfaction of whipping up a batch of cookies and then enjoying them in the same afternoon, but it seems that in this case, advance planning makes a world of difference. What I’ve done a couple times is make a batch of dough, stick it in the fridge, and then over the course of a week bake off a couple cookies at a time whenever I felt the urge.

2. Flour is your friend. All of the better recipes I looked at, including the Times’ monumental, delicious contribution to the chocolate chip world, called for what might seem like a lot of flour. This goes along with the last point: the more flour, the more the egg is soaked up, the drier and firmer the dough (drier doughs create a better consistency), the more delicious everything becomes in the finished product. The gluten content of the flour you use is also important. I’m not quite sure how, but bread flour allows the cookie to develop a chewier texture without getting cakey. I ended up using mostly bread flour with a little bit of cake flour, to give things a bit more of a softness.

3. Use nice butter. For obvious reasons, using high-quality ingredients always has an effect, but with a dessert that relies so heavily on butter, you need to make sure you’re using the good stuff. After perusing the internet a bit, I found that cultured butter (Organic Valley has a delicious one that I use all the time) is best for baked goods. Cultured butter is made from cream with bacterial culture and lactic acid added. Then the cultured butter develops flavor during an aging process (see wikipedia for more information). Because of the aging process, cultured butter has more of a taste than non-cultured butter. Yes, it’s more expensive, but considering it’s made in smaller batches and actually tastes better than other butter, I would suggest that it’s worth it. Just give it a try, and if you decide you hate it and it’s a total waste of money, you can write me and tell me how wrong I am.

4. Salt and savor. Did you know that salt is awesome? Cause it is. It brings out the flavor of whatever you’re baking; it makes the flavor of certain ingredients, like flour and butter, more pronounced; it slows down chemical reactions, causing fermentation to happen more evenly (this is really only pertinent to bread, but it’s still awesome); and it has a positive effect on texture. Basically, it brings a lot of things together in a very pleasing way. Yes, too much salt is bad, and you should limit your intake of it generally, but in baked goods, it’s delicious, and your basic cookie recipe probably doesn’t call for enough of it.

5. Don’t overdo it. This goes for most things, as far as cookies are concerned. Don’t overmix, don’t add too much sugar or vanilla, and (I think) most importantly, don’t overbake your cookies. When they’re done, they’ll actually look like they might be a bit underbaked: the top should be puffy and slightly sticky looking and golden brown, but not dry. Overcooked cookies will still taste awesome, but they won’t maintain that chewy texture after they’ve cooled down. As long as you’re not terrified of raw eggs, I would err on the side of underbaking, rather than overbaking.

happy tummies, happy hearts.

doughballs

I did my cookies this weekend, excited to bake my own guys after weeks of testing and tasting and tweaking. My recipe is pretty standard, with a few little flourishes: I used a tiny bit of almond extract (less than a quarter of a teaspoon) in addition to vanilla, because I adore almond; and I browned a little bit of the butter (it adds a bit of nuttiness) and added it along with the vanilla and almond. But essentially, the above points are what I found to be most important: chilling, flour content, butter quality, salt, and not overbaking. So I did all of those things: I sifted together the drying ingredients, creamed the butter with the sugars (mostly dark brown and a little bit of white), added the eggs, the vanilla and almond, and the brown butter. Then I gently folded in the flour. The dough might look a little more dry than you’re used to, but as I mentioned above, that’s a good thing. Then I mixed in the chips, zipped everything up in a bag, and put it in the fridge until the following day.

When I was ready to bake the cookies off, I heated up the oven and plopped those puppies onto a baking sheet. Then, after a little time sunning themselves, the cookies were ready. And I was really happy with them: they’re sweet, but not too sweet, buttery, chewy, a bit crispy around the edges, and happy all around. Boots came over and ate two on the spot. Most importantly, they maintain their chewiness even after they’ve cooled down. I took most of the guys to work and ate one with a cup of tea: fabulous.

And that’s the that. Hooray!

girlcate’s best ever chocolate chip cookies oh my goodness hooray.

sea of cookies

get happy, and get a recipe, over this way