Sunday, July 02, 2006

On cookies

dough

When I was living in the 'States I didn't have much money for food, but I did have enough money for cookies from the campus bakery. Big, chewy, marginally undercooked cookies the size of my hand. I'd buy one of those and a flagon of percolator coffee in the morning and I'd be right 'til lunchtime. Then again, I was in a permanently hungover state, so my perspective on nutrition was not to be trusted. Still. Cookies, that is, big, chewy, sweet, crunchy bad for you American style cookies, are portable rounds of comfort and security.

I was not feeling right this afternoon. I was sad and the city was grey, cold and drizzly. My skin was wrong from the air conditioning at work and no one had understood my T-shirt. There was only one thing that could make this morose Sunday any better, and that was liberal doses of NWA and cookies.

I got home, cleared the benches of 7-Eleven bags and plates stuck with crumbs of pot, turned on the oven and gathered together my cookie stuff. If you would like to try the cookies I made, you will need the following. You will need 3/4 cup self raising flour (I used wholemeal because I think it tastes better), 115g soft butter, 1/2 cup loosely packed brown sugar, 1/3 cup white sugar, an egg, 1 1/2 cup oats (as in Uncle Tobys), 3/4 cup chocolate chips, a teaspoon each respectively of vanilla, ground ginger and cinnamon, and half a teaspoon of cardamom.

On account of the fact that I don't have a hand mixer I put the butter (and I do believe it really should be butter) in a Pyrex jug with the sugar and nuked it for fifteen seconds. I then turned it into a bowl and beat the lot as though it owed me money until it was creamily combined. I then beat in the egg and vanilla, followed by the flour, a good few shakes of salt and the spices, until it looked like cookie dough. I then dumped in the chocolate chips and oats and bashed, stabbed, winkled and poked until I had an oaty, lumpy, chocolatey dough.

At that point I baking papered some trays and laid out twelve neat, big lumps of dough (around 2 tbsp each), and baked them for 25 minutes at around 180 degrees. Afterwards I let them cool and, well, I think you can imagine what to do after that.

cookies

2 comments:

Ben said...

And so it begins.

But what is IT?

Thusly.

Thus-ly.

Tttttttthhhhhuuuuly.

Rach said...

It is now 'bakes.' Are you happier now?

It can't be 'thusly,' that'd ruin the reference.

POST SOMETHING.