Chocs ahoy!

It has been a dreadful week.  Never any good news when you open the newspapers.  It just seemed frivolous posting about my craft and cooking at that point.  But it was great to see so many people doing their best to help out and my prayers go out to all the war torn and disaster stricken countries.  We are indeed lucky in Singapore that we aren't plagued by disastrous natural disasters.

We all needed some cheering up so I whipped up a batch of double chocolate chip and nuts cookies. 

I love my chocolate. As a child, I loved it sweet and milk. But as with many things, as I got older, my tastes changed. Now I love my chocolate slightly bitter and dark. Too much sugar is a no-no and I feel that it spoils the taste. Which is why I tend to avoid buying commercial cookies unless they come highly recommended. DIY is always the best isn't it? You get to control what goes in and how much.

This recipe is modified from You Made That as I didn't have some of the required ingredients. I was also impatient and didn't want to wait 1 hour for the dough to chill so I scooped the cookie mixture and dumped it onto the baking tray directly. Still tasted fantastic.

Double chocolate chip and nuts cookies

Ingredients

125 g unsalted butter

3 large eggs

½ cup sugar

9 tbs cocoa powder

1/3 cup all purpose flour

½ tsp baking powder

100 g dark chocolate chips

1 cup chopped almonds

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2. Melt the butter over the stove – don't let it boil.
3. Whisk the eggs and sugar together until well mixed.
4. Sift the cocoa powder, all purpose flour and baking powder together.
5. Whisk the melted butter into the egg and sugar mixture.
6. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ones.
7. Add the dark chocolate chips and almonds and mix well.
8. Place tablespoonfuls of cookie mixture onto a sheet of baking paper, leaving 2.5 cm in between.
9. Bake for 15 minutes.
10. Take cookies out of oven and cool on a baking rack.

Notes

1. Unsalted butter is more expensive than salted butter and with good reason. It contains less impurities and has a higher smoking point. But I'm cheap – I use salted butter. The family still can't tell the difference.
2. Let the butter cool – if it's too hot, it will cook the egg!
3. Leaving the space between cookies allow the cookies to expand – which they do! I was impatient and tried to cram more cookies in and ended up with a cookie sheet once!