Friday, July 2, 2010

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 :)

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

these are classic chewy cookies. congratulations on inaugurating the cooking range... and ofcourse the new house! keep baking...its easier than we think!

Lavanya said...

Hey Swati! Congrats on the baking maiden voyage :) These look great! PS: With cookie dough, using an ice cream scoop to place the dough onto the baking sheet is the best option.

Swati Sapna said...

@arundati - the cookies are definitely chewy! :D dont know if they were meant to be that way though... he he he! and yes, have sworn to bake something at least once a week, if not more! lets see how that resolution goes ;)
@lavanya - thanks for the tip... i cant believe we are back in touch after almost a decade thanks to food blogging! :) love ur blog girl!

arundati said...

love the new header...personalised is always best! and the new colours////

Smruti said...

New look of the blog is fantastic!

Next time husband is out, I'll come over again and we can try breads :-)

Anonymous said...

Congrats on taking the first plunge towards baking. I think your cookies came out really well despite the glitches. It's great that you know what went wrong and I'm positive your next batch will be perfect.

Srivalli said...

Those cookies look awesome!..I can imagine the thrill of chewing on your own homemade ones..:)

Swati said...

@Valerie - thanks a ton for the encouraging words :) baking my next batch today... so keeping fingers crossed!!!

Lakshmi said...

Those look so yumm! And LOVE THE NEW HEADER. Caps intended :-)

Lawyer Loves Lunch said...

It's rare that something looks good but doesn't taste it. I generally have the opposite problem :) I bet they taste pretty darn good though!

Swati Sapna said...

@lakshmi - thanks girl!
@azmina - thanks a ton for dropping by! and yes, i know what ur saying but trust me, this was one instance of food that looked great but tasted jus about ok :( but hell, i made up for it the next day with some oatmeal cookies. did i mention that they didnt look as great as these ones? hmmm...