Hi everyone,
One of the benefits of going to NZ to visit family is all the home baking we get. Mum's tagline is "while the oven is on I'll just bake...". The grandchildren do not complain! One of the (many) things I gobbled up was a simple but delicious chocolate chip cookie. I must apologise because I didn't note down the recipe book it was in so can't attribute a source but I've changed a couple of things as per usual so it's not exactly the same:
Ingredients:
125g butter
3/4 cup rapadura sugar (or brown sugar)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla (extract is preferable)
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 3/4 cups self-raising flour or same of gluten free flour + 2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt (optional)
125g chocolate chips
60g walnut pieces (optional)
Method:
Preheat oven to 180 celcius.
Line two oven trays with greaseproof paper.
Cream together butter, sugar and vanilla in food processor/mixer.
Add egg and beat well.
Add flour and salt and mix well.
Add chocolate chips and walnuts and mix until evenly distributed.
Shape teaspoonfuls of mixture into small balls and place on baking trays. Press down lightly with fingers or the back of a spoon.
Bake for approximately 10-12mins until just golden.
Makes about 40 biscuits.
This is the gluten free flour I usually use and I recently found some dark chocolate chips with no crap in them. The ingredients are just cocoa mass, cane sugar, cocoa butter, cocoa powder. Whereas most chocolate chips are made from compound chocolate with these ingredients: Sugar, Hydrogenated Palm Oil, Cocoa Powder (12%), Milk Solids, Emulsifier [Soy Lecithin], Natural Vanilla Flavour. Obviously the big nasty is the hydrogenated oil but they also have flavouring in them - remember even when it says natural flavour, it's not really natural; and milk solids which is no good if you are dairy free (and these were dark chocolate chips). You could also use chopped up chocolate instead of chocolate chips if you can't find any decent ones.
And a Christmas joke to finish on:
Why are elves such great motivational speakers?
They have plenty of elf-confidence!
Happy baking!
Carla :)
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