Welcome to adobo-down-under!

Musings. Family. Food. Stories. Cooking. Recipes. Eating. A recipe journal. From simple Filipino dishes to challenging recipes and exciting gastronomical failures. This is for my girls to look back on for comfort, memories, laughs, love and lots of food!

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

To Chocolate Chip Cookies and all its glory

I found this article link from the NY Times about the perfect chocolate cookie recipe via marketmanila's blog here. The article by David Leite praises the originator of this world famous cookie recipe - Ruth Graves Wakefield. Inspired and raring to go the extra mile, I took on butter, sugar and eggs to bowl with mixer in tow and tried my hand finding the right chewy kind of CCC (Chocolate Chip Cookie) version.

From the article, came the version by Jacques Torres (I used to watch this guy from the Lifestyle Channel in the PI concoct fancy chocolate creations, most of them daunting and overwhelming to watch. One of things that leaves me dreaming - like my previous post on the Devil's Food White-out Cake.), which I didn't try because it called for resting the dough for 24hours. This won't work for me as I'm as giddy as a 3yo when it comes to waiting for the result of my baking creations. Usually, I'd be endlessly peeking into the oven, which must cause a lot of my baking end in disaster. Patience in these instances, can really be an effort on my part.

And so while we are in the subject of CCC, I took the easiest route. I tried, and tested the recipe at the back of the Nestle Chocolate Bits package. It was easy in a hodgepodge kind of way, and unique too as it called for the addition of condensed milk. The result was really sweet smelling cookies, but hard as a rock. Either its the constant peeking in the oven or my oven temperature is really adding to my frustration. I made two batches of these, hoping the second batch will turn out better - meaning chewy. It didn't.


Two weeks on, I found two other versions. I found this recipe of Alton's Browns Chewy version online here. I like AB with his quirky and interesting take on food and cooking. AB's version called for the same ingredients as Dorie Greenspan's with a slight variation on the use of egg yolk and milk. But this time around, I tried DG's My Best Chocolate Chip Cookies from her recipe book "Baking from my home to yours".

I take my imaginary chef's hat off to this one. When she said its the "BEST" she's absolutely right. (Duh! She's an expert baker!) The most chewy kind of homemade chocolate chip cookie there is. And it even gets 5-stickers from each of my very fussy critics (my kids!)



So far, with all my adventures and misadventures into baking, I have a renewed sense of belief in all bakers. To me they are artists in their own right. Perfecting the simple chiffon cake or as simple as baking a batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies can be really taxing if instructions are not followed to the dot. Someone else' years of baking experience is now giving me the comfort of easy to follow baking recipes! Results can almost always be perfect.... but as the old saying goes. Perfection takes patience. I need to stop peeking into the oven NOW!

Maybe next time, I'll do AB's version. Ah! Here's to Mrs Wakefield and too all chocolate chip cookie lovers!

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