How to: Homemade chocolate chip cookies

I'm back!
My apologies for the lack of blogging, I was extremely busy writing my graduation research for school. At the moment I am waiting for the board to decide upon my faith which means I have some time for myself and ofcourse you again!

To celebrate this joyfull fact I am introducing a new type of blog, one that I am intending to use more often: 'How to'.
In my How to blogs I want to share my knowledge or experiences with you so not only me, but also you guys at home can give a shot in what I am doing. Whatever 'it' is depends on each different blogpost.

To start of right, I proudly present my first How to blog.
'How to: Homemade chocolate chip cookies'

What do you need?
225 grams of butter (room temperature)
350 grams of ligth brown castor sugar (basterdsuiker in Dutch)
2 eggs
400 grams of flower
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 teaspoon of yeast (gist in Dutch)
225 grams of chocolate, dark chocolate works best but all sorts are possible


A handmixer
Several bowls
At least two baking sheets (bakplaten in Dutch)
Baking paper

What to do?

- Preheat the oven at 180 degrees. (Remember to leave out the baking sheets)
- Put the butter and the sugar together in a bowl and mix well.



- If the substance of butter and sugar is well mixed, add the eggs one by one and mix together well.

TIP! Break the eggs in a seperate bowl one by one before adding to your butter en sugar. Why? If the egg is bad or some of the shell gets in there while breaking it, the rest isn't ruined.



- Add the flower, salt and yeast and keep mixing untill every ingredient is well dissolved in the dough. This dough is very heavy and thick so you will probably need a high level of speed on the mixer.
- Chop up all the chocolate in chuncks, don't grate it because then it will be too small, and add it to the dough.

TIP! If you have trouble chopping the chocolate, put the bars in a bowl and put them in the microwave for just a few seconds on the lowest heath level. But make sure they don't melt! The bars still need to be solid. Also use a knife that has 'teeth', this will give you more grip on the chocolate but watch your fingers.



- Again, mix together well so that the chocolate chips are divided evenly in the dough.
- Cover your baking sheets with baking paper, this to avoid your cookies to get stuck to the baking sheet, and make 6 little heaps of dough on each baking sheet. Keep them seperate from eachother so they still have space to 'grow'.

TIP! This dough is enough for 24 chocolate chip cookies, so you bake 4 baking sheets with each 6 chocolate chip cookies. If you have less baking sheets, like I do, you bake the cookies in several shifts.

- Put the cookies in the oven for about 10 minutes. The exact time depends on the exact heath of each seperate oven so watch the cookies from minute 9 until minute 12.
If the cookies look brown around the edges with small cracks, they can come out.
- Leave them on the baking sheet until they are cooled off entirely. If you don't, like I did sometimes, they will break easily.



- Present them in a cute cookiejar. I like my jar with cupcake design but one of glass looks very nice too.



Bon appetit!

This is a recipe from the Hummingbird bakingbook with some slight adjustments due to my own experiences.
Hummingbird Bakery is created by Tarek Malouf and is a huge success in London.
They are famous for their cupcakes, brownies, cakes, pies, bars and cookies.
You can find them on Portobelloroad in Notting Hill, Old Brompton Road in South Kensington and Wardour Street in Soho. If I ever visit London any time soon, you can find me there.
Visit the website here: http://hummingbirdbakery.com


I would also like to thank the readers that have left a message lately. To be honest I didn't think this blog was actually read by people so I appreciate the messages very much, thank you!
If you have any comments, tips, or requests for blog subjects I would very much like to hear them. So please comment! I'm so curious who you, my readers, are.

I am planning to make a recipe for World Championship (soccer) cupcakes.
If this recipe works out well, I will write a How to about it too.

If you have any questions about this recipe, feel free to ask them.
For now: Have fun baking, thank you for reading and I hope to hear from you!

Love,
Noes