Cooking is a science

For me, at least.. I seldom see the art in my cooking! :p But I can see the science..

Realised this while making cookies – my third attempt in Evanston, and my second in making Ben’s cookies. (First was from the back of some dried fruit pack :p)

So, I started with melting the butter. The butter came in a stick. I dumped it into a bowl, and cut it up with a spoon while indirectly melting it over the stove top right above the pilot fire. The butter went from a huge lump to a clumpy watery mixture, and finally creamy..

Decided to start snapping after I had stirred in the white sugar – nice and creamy :)

Next was the brown sugar. A lot of brown sugar! And the consistency changed and became thicker. I think most of the sugar got dissolved in the butter.. Cos I don't see much of the sugar anymore but I could still hear the sugar..

Now the egg. I had halved the recipe so it now called for half an egg and half an egg yolk but I couldn’t be bothered to separate or be left with half of each!

Egg was so fresh and pretty! After snapping, I promptly beat through the membrane of the egg :p It was fun beating in the egg despite it almost costing me my arm...

The creamy mixture was now held together by the egg, resulting in a rather springy consistency. Then I added a tablespoon of milk, which somehow broke up the springiness. Honestly, at this point, even though it was about 7 pm, I lost all appetite for dinner – it looked like puke :p

Time for the dry ingredients! The first bit of the flour mixture:

I folded in the flour with the spoon. The creamy mixture became a soft dough after all the flour was folded in. I was happy! But my arm just died *.*

I then measured out a cup of semi sweet chocolate chips, and saw that the bag of chocolate chips contained about two cups.. But I used a cup for my first attempt at Ben’s cookies! And a bit more for my first batch of cookies!

There was only one explanation – my cup is too small!

So, with my shrivelled arm, I added another quarter cup of flour to the dough - a stiffer dough now.. And I poured in all the remaining chocolate chips after that!! :)

Chilled the dough for an hour while I had dinner.

And because the cookies spread out a lot in my last attempt, I decided to bake the cookies in two batches instead.

And guess what? They tasted the same as before but they now turned out looking like Ben’s cookies as well! So happy :)

Think the last time, I shouldn’t have melted the butter so completely over a small fire. And of course, I didn’t use enough flour :p

This is the recipe*. Not the actual one for Ben’s cookies of course, but it’s very close. This makes about 9-15 cookies depending on how big your cookie is!

* Sorry, can’t credit originator – I saved this in my hard-disk and forgot about it!

115g unsalted butter
1/8 cup caster sugar
5/8 cups brown sugar
1/2 egg and 1/2 egg yolk
1 tbs milk
3/4 teaspoons vanilla extract – oops, I don’t have this :p

1 1/8 cups bread flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1) Melt the butter indirectly and cream with the sugar
2) Add the egg, milk and vanilla extract
3) Stir in the flour mix, then the chocolate chips
4) Chill for a while – it should be cold
5) Scoop onto baking sheet and bake at 190 °C for about 14 mins or until edges turn brown if you can see them – I can’t, stupid oven..
6) Eat while very warm, or store when cool – but heat it up before you have them!