The chocolate chip cookie

I absolutely love baking (Influenced by my mum). If I could, I would bake everyday but, I have school work + other hobbies. And anyways,I'd get fatter and fatter each day, eating up all the treats.I don't want to become a professional baker or anything,I just like baking for fun. And if I bake, I usually end up giving my treats away to my friends (My friends know I bake cupcakes kinda often) since none of my family eats them. Except if they're up to my mum's standard (Like her scones, cheesecake or chiffon cake).

 I also have a strange obsession of looking at recipes on food blogs , but at the same time , knowing that I'm not going to use all of them. The pictures look so scrumptious and wow, but sometimes I cringe at how much butter and sugar there is!

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Anyway, I think I may have nearly mastered the chocolate chip cookie. Don't be fooled, it's not the easiest, consistent thing to bake. It may seem basic but , anything could go wrong with making the perfect chocolate chip cookie. Too much flour, too much sugar, a few seconds extra in the oven, and there you have a not-so-perfect cookie. My definition of the perfect chocolate chip cookie is to be chewy on the inside, crispy around the edge and lots of chocolate chips.

I have been hunting down for the perfect recipe. I've seen many food bloggers write about the New York times chocolate chip cookie and I never knew what the fuss was about. The annoying thing is that the recipe has cake flour AND bread flour, something I do not know of, or have. But I ended up making it anyways, substituted the cake flour with plain flour + two tablespoons of cornstarch and the bread flour with plain flour. I experimented and found out that I actually needed to put more flour to make it a bit more thick, and cut down on the sugar! And putting that sprinkle of sea salt which seems to be weird when you hear about it, but it really is a finishing touch because it compliments that chocolate.

The recipe is on some blog, but it originates from the New York times. I halved it, and thankfully I did because I had SO much cookie dough, I'm not even sure how many cookies I made! But that was due to me eating them......

 It really does help if you refrigerate your dough for a minimum of 24 hours (But preferably 36 hours) to let the mixture relax  (As weird as that sounds) and also apparently hydrate the dough?

I also made this chocolate souffle! Which was as easy as pie. No, but seriously, it's so simple and it tastes so great. But now I'm going to have to burn that tomorrow when I go jogging for 4 km. I usually jog 2 km, but I recently started jogging 4 km to train up for cross country, which is coming in 2 weeks!

My baking goals for 2012:

To learn how to bake....

- Tiramisu

- Cheesecake

- Fondant cake

- Apple crumble 

Oh there are endless possibilities with baking... The beauty of it.

I'll be posting about Bosnia pretty soon!