Sinfully-Dark Chocolate Cookies

After much trepidation, hesitation and procrastination, I finally inaugurated the oven in my new cooking range with these seemingly simple Chocolate Cookies. I was really apprehensive about even starting the oven because for one, I have never really baked in my entire life. And two, this being a gas oven and not an electric one, I was just extremely unsure how to operate it successfully...(This in spite of a complete demo from the cooking range representative!).

So after much persuasion on my friend SM's part, including an amazing housewarming gift of a set of baking paraphernalia, I finally steeled myself to give these cookies a try. The recipe is from the Glen Cooking Range manual and recipe book.
Ingredients:

Flour - 1 cup (125 gms)
Butter - 80 gms
Sugar - 6 tbsp (75 gms)
Cocoa Powder - 2/3 cup (75 gms)
Salt - 1/2 tsp
Egg - 1
Baking Powder - 1 tsp

Keep the butter out for a couple of hours before you start baking so that it is at room temperature. Sieve together the flour, salt, baking powder and cocoa powder. Now mix the butter and sugar and keep folding it with a fork or wooden spoon till all the sugar granules melt in and it reaches a creamy consistency. If you have an electric hand mixer, then just cream the butter and sugar together till its soft. Beat the egg and pour it into the flour mixture. Add the creamed butter and sugar to it. Now knead it lightly and add a splash of milk if necessary. Roll out the dough and cut it into rounds with a cookie-cutter or a katori. Now evenly space the cookie dough on a greased baking tray making sure their edges do not touch.

Preheat the oven for 15-20min at 210°C. Place the baking tray inside the oven and bake for 10-15min. Switch off the oven when done and let the cookies cool before transferring them from the baking tray.

Garnish with some toasted almonds and crunch away!


This being my first attempt at proper baking, I got quite a few things wrong. First, I measured the Cocoa powder wrong and ended up putting in more than a 100gms instead of just 75 gms. This made the cookies a little bitter. The dough I kneaded became too runny and I couldn't roll it at all! So I ended up patting little mounds of gooey dough onto the baking tray instead... I think this is because I didn't cream the butter and sugar well.

Anyway, so the end product looks great, but doesn't taste as good. Also the crust is nice and crunchy, but the cookie center has more of a cake kind of consistency... But now that I have crossed my first hurdle, I have promised myself that I'll bake as often as I can and hopefully the results will get better! So if any of you have suggestion on how I can better my baking skills, or if you have recipes or links for beginners like me, please do drop in a comment :)