Posts tagged chocolate chip
that's what she baked.
Adventures (and misadventures) in the kitchen from a novice baker.
Please excuse how yellow the pictures are. The temperature dropping makes it the perfect time of year to bake as much as possible and fill the apartment with nice smells and heat, but the lighting is bleh.. (really, it’s because I bake at night often, and that has nothing to do with the seasons, but let’s just blame it on winter, anyway).
Up until recently, I did not like biscotti or scones. I felt like both of the baked goods were always too dry, too hard, and not sweet enough for my liking. I just wanted them to be something else. Like a cookie, or a sweet bread, just not themselves. My apologizes, guys… you’re great when you’re great. And you’re especially great with coffee. When Tyler and I first moved in together earlier this year, he had a large jar that he proclaimed he wanted to always be full of biscotti. It took me a while to get on that (just starting last month), but I’m going to try and keep up with it. Maybe I’ll make a new biscotti every month. Maybe I won’t remember I said I’d do that.
Pictured, is my first try with my signed Joy the Baker cookbook. It’s the Dark Chocolate and Anise Biscotti. I didn’t have dark chocolate so I subbed mini semi-sweet chocolate chips instead. And I over-baked them by about 5 minutes.. but nothing dunking in coffee couldn’t solve. Also, anise, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I loved you, too. I can’t wait to try everything in this book! You’ll probably be seeing a lot of baking from it soon.
Last weekend when I made my favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies with Sea Salt I decided I wanted to save some to make ice cream sandwiches. They’re perfect for sandwiches because they’re soft. They are also perfect because they are delicious.
While I love love love these cookies, they are troublesome for me because I can’t get them to look how I want them to. Do I smush down the balls of dough before they bake or do I let it melt? There’s a fine line in my oven between under-baked and too crunchy (in my opinion). I need to heavily monitor where they are in the oven. I finally got “finishing” sea salt so you can see the salt, which I really like. They still taste pretty much, ballin’, a favorite of friends and family. But if I were to have a bakery, I’d need to figure out how to make these better before putting them behind glass and asking people to pay for them.
Chocolate Chip Cookies with Sea Salt
(using this recipe)
Chocolate Chip Cookies with Sea Salt: A Recipe
Ingredients (yields 2 dozen cookies)
- 1 cup flour (I used 100% white whole wheat flour.. it’s from Trader Joe’s, and my recipe is based off of the one on the side of the bag)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup butter (of course at room temperature… I usually cube mine first, too)
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 egg
- 1 cup chocolate chips
- sea salt
Directions
Preheat the oven to 375°
Sift the flour, salt, baking soda and cinnamon into a medium bowl, set aside. In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or a hand mixer and big bowl, combine butter and sugars until smooth. Add egg and vanilla to your butter/sugar mixture.
Slowly add in your dry mixture. Fold or mix in chocolate chips. Go ahead, taste some cookie dough.
Stop eating raw cookie dough. Scoop rounded tablespoons of the dough onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. I usually use ice cream scoops to make cookies. Slightly smoosh the balls of cookie dough with the palm of your hand. Sprinkle pinches of sea salt onto each cookie (to taste).
Bake in the oven for 8-10 minutes. If you forget you put a second batch in the oven, and your oven is like mine, and the heat is significantly different on different racks, you’ll have some perfectly soft cookies (my favorite) and some equally delicious cookies with a nice crunch.
Enjoy!
Chocolate Chip Cookies with Sea Salt (recipe here)
I’ve been on a salt kick lately. It’s just so good. What it does to enhance flavors makes such simple bites taste so yummy, making me crave more. Or maybe I just want more salt. Sprinkle it on avocados, cantaloupe, bread and butter, or fresh mozzarella with some tomatoes basil and oil. I just want an excuse to put salt on something.
I was feeling a bit down the other day and I saw a post of one of my new favorite blog’s A Beautiful Mess for Dark Chocolate Chip and Sea Salt Cookie recipe and I thought to myself, I should make that! So I didn’t actually use their recipe, which was a nod to a Martha Stewart recipe, but I used my own, which is a nod to a Trader Joe’s recipe on the side of the flour bag.
It helped get me out of my funk for the time being as well as fulfill some more of my salt craving.
Earlier this week, the first thing I baked in my apartment was oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, as a “just because it’s Tuesday” treat for my fellow teachers. I over-baked the first batch, but Tyler likes them best that way, so he got quite a few extra cookies put aside just for him. They all turned out crispier than I prefer (I’m a soft-cookie kinda gal), but were still yummy.
The top picture is in my pantry. I loooovvvve the built in storage. I love storage and containers and organization in general, so it’s working out very well. You can clearly see the baking shelf and the combined cookbooks between Tyler and I next to the plastic bins full of all my decorating stuff and cupcake liners.
Chocolate Chip Banana Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Frosting.
In all seriousness, THESE ARE THE BEST CUPCAKES I HAVE EVER MADE.
Really.
Also, I’m getting the hang of using a pastry bag for frosting. Not so much with the big guys, but the littles are getting much easier for me. I think I might get myself some other tips, too.
Everything smelled like banana and peanut butter in the apartment
And it was wonderful. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve been on a peanut butter and banana and chocolate and peanut butter kick (it makes sense, I swear). I made cupcakes for a co-workers birthday and when I asked what he wanted he said that he’s enjoyed everything I’ve made this year, nothing too sweet and to try something new. So I did.
And I bring you… Banana Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Frosting. I’ve made Banana Cupcakes before (a couple times, I think) and have been wanting to mix it up for a while. The cake is mostly based on a recipe from one of my cupcake books tweaked a little (maybe I will share at a later date) and for the frosting is this one.
I mashed up semi-sweet chocolate chunks so there were chocolate chunks and chocolate crumbs, I liked what it did to the cake, a lot.
I doubled the batter but probably over mixed the sugar and butter or something so I had A LOT of cupcake pans to fill. I had a very full oven.
It all tastes the same in the end.
Head’s up, if you’re going to use that peanut butter cream cheese frosting recipe (which you should because it is AMAZING) and then double it, you will have a lot of frosting left over, after covering 2 dozen regular sized cupcakes and 3 and 1/2 dozen mini cupcakes. I have very firm beliefs on the frosting to cupcake ratio.
I love the chocolate chip cookie recipe I use.
This is for 2 main reasons.
- It’s quite simple and doesn’t call for lots of ingredients or bowls or measuring spoons
- They’re pretty darn yummy, if I do say so myself.
I was finally done washing the dishes upon dishes upon baking pans after Thursday night’s baking (see here, here and here, in case you were wondering). But Saturday afternoon, I felt like making cookies for the improv show I was in, so I went to my go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe* on the bag of Trader Joe’s 100% White Whole Wheat Flour. It only needs a 1 cup, a 1/2 cup and a tea spoon and 2 bowls.
Usually when I bake, I look at the amounts of things I’m going to measure and find all the right tools (sometimes I measure everything out ahead of time, but not always).
The only thing I have to say about the recipe that isn’t top notch, is that it calls for “1 package of chocolate chips” and that’s not very specific because packages are different sizes (usually only two, but still). I usually vary the amount I add depending on what else I might put in the cookies.
This time I decided to do semi-sweet chocolate chips and peanut butter chips.
I don’t mean this to be a product placement, sorry about that, I usually buy this kind of stuff depending on what’s on sale. (Please note, in the picture below, that no, I did not move my toaster away from my “mixing station” and yes, I did get batter all over it)
In total, I actually did add the entire package of chocolate chips and 3/4 of the peanut butter chips. I was told they were very chocolately, and sometimes their would be a bite of just peanut butter (which is my fault in the mixing), and that certain bites felt like a different cookie, but that was it still enjoyed very much.
I baked 2 batches, one of a TON of mini cookies (I just got a new itty bitty cookie scooper and wanted to try it out), that actually were the size of most packaged cookies, and then another batch of biggies.
They’re not very thick, and it is probably do to something I’m doing wrong, like over-mixing, but I like them like that.
*I think I’ve posted the recipe before, but if anybody wants to check it out, I’d be happy to post it again. It just means I need to make chocolate chip cookies again, which I don’t have a problem with, at all.
Cookies and soy milk.
I’m not sure what to call these, because if I say peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, they sound like peanut butter cookies with chocolate chips, but if I say peanut butter chip and chocolate chip cookies that sounds silly. Hm… chocolate chip cookies with peanut butter chips, also?
