Best Big, Fat, Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie

 

It has been a while since we last baked these  cookies. It was our favourite when we first arrived here and we used to get the Mrs. Field Big Fat Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies. However, we stopped buying it ever since we found this recipe from allrecipes.com.

The contributor of this recipe mentioned that “these cookies are the pinnacles of perfection! If you want a big, fat, chewy cookie like the kind you see at bakeries and specialty shops, then these are the cookies for you”!

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Steps:

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F  and grease cookie sheets or line with parchment paper.
2. Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt; set aside.
3. In a medium bowl, cream together the melted butter, brown sugar and white sugar until well blended. Beat in the vanilla, egg, and egg yolk until light and creamy. Mix in the sifted ingredients until just blended. Stir in the chocolate chips by hand using a wooden spoon.
4. Drop cookie dough 1/4 cup at a time onto the prepared cookie sheets. Cookies should be about 3 inches apart.
5. Bake for 14 to 16 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the edges are lightly toasted.
6. Cool on baking sheets for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

This recipe is definitely for keep. It has never failed me so far. We really love the cookies as it is crunchy in the outside and chewy in the outside. A perfect snack for us while watching the 2010 Olympic Men’s Gold Medal Game (Canada vs US). Go Maple!!!

Baking Conversion Table

 

As different countries use different kind of measurement units, different recipes tend to come with different unit of measurement as well. For myself, I am more familiar with using cups and spoons  nowadays to measure my baking ingredients. However, back in my home country in Malaysia, I was more familiar with grams and ml.

To make life simpler, we just need to stick with one type of measurement unit and simply let the conversion chart do the work for us. Despite there are many conversion charts available online, I prefer to use conversion charts that are specific to baking as I find them to be more accurate.

Here are my compilation of useful conversion charts:

1. Cups to grams conversion specific to each baking ingredient
2. Cups, grams and ounces conversion specific to each baking ingredient
3. Cookie Baking Conversion Charts and Equivalents
4. Complete Measurement Conversion Table (Oz, grams, oz., ml, cup, tbsp., tsp.)

So, it really depends on what kind of conversions that you are looking for. Hope the links above help and solve your headache!

Baking Ingredient Substitution Table

 

I am pretty sure that many bakers out there often face with the same problem like me of not having certain specific ingredients as required by the recipes from time to time. It can be frustrating especially when you have all the ingredients that the recipe called for but ONE is gone missing.

Not to worry. I have faced with this situation many times and what I usually do is to substitute the missing ingredients with ingredients on hand. But how?

I would usually Google online for it but I found this method to be very inefficient. Thus, I have always wanted to compile a list of all substitution for baking ingredients. However, there is no point to reinvent the wheel when similar work has already been done.

To keep long story short, I would use this site Baking Ingredient Substitution Table as my main reference. As the author of the table mentioned, using a different ingredient may change both the taste and texture of your baking, so it is a good idea before substituting to understand the role that ingredient plays in the recipe.  Do use the table as a guideline only.

Whole Grain Mixed Berries Muffins

Muffins have always been my favourite as the recipe is simple to whip up. Since I  have some leftover fresh blueberries, it’s a shame if I don’t put it to good use and let it rotten.

For this time, I would prefer some healthy muffins. I made some modification to the original recipe on Whole Grain Blueberry Muffins by substituting the frozen blueberries with half cup fresh blueberries and half cup frozen cranberries.

The original baker described the muffins as “nice juicy blueberries with a subtle muffin background, and the blueberries were the start of the show…..”

Ingredients:

• 1/8 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 3/4 cup AP flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/4 butter, melted
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 cup fresh blueberries
• 1/2 cup frozen cranberries

Steps:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Mix the sugar, honey, egg, milk, butter and vanilla together until smooth.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk the dry ingredients together.
4. Add the dry ingredients and fold lightly until just combined (don't over mix or the muffins will toughen). Fold in the mixed berries.
5. Spoon the mixture evenly into 6 muffin cups. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean.

The texture of the muffin is great but it is just too sour to hubby’s liking. I am fine with it. Probably I shall add more sugar if cranberry is used to replace blueberry. I would think the recipe is good if I would have used blueberries only. Anyhow, I will leave that for the next time.

Honey Wheat Bread

 

From the blog history, I noted that we have stopped baking bread for the month of February. Probably we were too caught up with preparing food for CNY and Valentine’s Day. Guess it’s time to get back to our weekly bread baking in addition to other baking. We have just gotten ourselves a food processor that comes with a dough blade few days ago. In addition, we also bought another large loaf pan ( 9 1/4 x 5 1/4 x 2 3/4) with bonus recipe on honey wheat bread. The recipe looks good and easy to do. I decided to give it a try using the new food processor and the new loaf pan. Despite the food processor came with a plastic dough blade, we decided to use the normal stainless steel blade that came with the processor. From our online search, we found out that there are many complaints on the plastic dough blade. Anyhow, the dough came off well with the normal blade. Making bread is more simpler now with a kitchen helper :-).

Ingredients:

• 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour, divided
• 3/4 cup water
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 3/4 cup milk
• 2 cups whole wheat bread flour

Steps:

1. Combine 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour, salt and yeast in a large mixing bowl.
2. Heat milk, honey, water and oil until hot to touch (125 degrees F).
3. Gradually add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and beat for 2 minutes using medium speed. Scraping bowl occasionally.
4. Add 1/2 cup all purpose flour and beat at high speed for 2 minutes. Scraping bowl occasionally.
5. Stir in whole wheat flour and enough additional all purpose flour into processor until dough is stiff. Beat at medium speed and scraping bowl occasionally.
6. Knead on lightly floured surface until smooth and elastic for about 4-6 minutes.
7. On another large bowl, grease the bowl with a small amount of oil. Place the dough in the bowl and flip the dough to cover the dough with oil.
8. Cover the bowl with a plastic wrap and allow the dough to rise for 10 minutes.
9. After 10 minutes, remove the dough from the bowl and place on a lightly floured surface. Punch down in the dough to release the air from the bread and knead out bubbles for 5 minutes.
10. Shape the dough into a 8 inches log and place seamed side down into a lightly grease loaf pan.
11. Cover the loaf pan with plastic wrap and let it rise for another 30 minutes.
12. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F and place the loaf pan in center of oven for 35 minutes.
13. You can test if the bread is done by thumping the bottom of the bread and it should sound hollow.
14. Let the bread cool on a wire rack for 10-15 minutes before slicing it

The recipe is good and the bread turns out well. It’s crusty in the outside and soft in the inside – a perfect loaf for sandwich bread or toast bread. I like this recipe for it’s short proofing time yet yields a good result. A loaf of bread like this provides us with about 13 –14 slices of bread which come up to 3 meals. Probably I should bake 2 loaves in the future to save time and minimize the washing. The bread can last for 4-5 days.

Blueberry Muffin

 

During last week grocery shopping, we got ourselves some fresh blueberries. Apparently, blueberries are good for health and help in promoting alertness. I got this “To Die For Blueberry Muffin” recipe by Colleen from allrecipes.com. There were thousands of good reviews for this recipe.

The author herself described that "These muffins are extra large and yummy with the sugary-cinnamon crumb topping. I usually double the recipe and fill the muffin cups just to the top edge for a wonderful extra-generously-sized deli style muffin. Add extra blueberries too, if you want!"

The recipe is very simple and I got it all done in half an hour. The modifications that I made to the original recipe based on other bakers’ comments are adding 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract and reducing the crumb topping to half.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup fresh blueberries
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1/6 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/8 cup butter, cubed
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Steps:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Grease muffin cups or line with muffin liners.
2. Combine 1 1/2 cups flour, 3/4 cup sugar, salt and baking powder. Place vegetable oil into a 1 cup measuring cup; add the egg and enough milk to fill the cup. Mix this with flour mixture. Stir in vanilla extract and fold in blueberries.
3. Fill muffin cups right to the top, and sprinkle with crumb topping mixture.
4. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes in the preheated oven, or until done.

To Make Crumb Topping:

1. Mix together 1/4 cup sugar, 1/6 cup flour, 1/8 cup butter, and 1 teaspoon cinnamon. Mix with fork, and sprinkle over muffins before baking.

The muffins smell good,delicate, moist and yummy delicious. In addition, you will get refreshing cinnamon aroma all over your house. Hubby said this is the best muffin so far. We especially love the crumb topping. It’s crunchy in the outside and soft in the inside. I will definitely bake this muffin again probably with different types of berries. If you want, you can even use dried apricots and walnuts. Overall, this is an awesome recipe!

Tips: For beginner muffin makers, it is crucial to know not to mix the batter too long or else, you will end up with tough, poorly risen muffins.

Vanilla Cupcake

 

For Valentine’s Day this year, we decided to prepare our very own home fine dining at the comfort of our own home. We have gotten ourselves some sort of wine, wine glasses and napkin way before the V day. Hubby never really like V day as he feels it’s too commercialize. As he is more of an expressive and emotional person, he prefers to celebrate love when he feels like it rather than on a fixed date. Adding on, he always like to be different. On the other hand, being myself, just like every other woman out there who enjoys being showered with love on the V Day, hubby still makes every effort he can to celebrate it with me. Dear, if you are reading this blog, thanks for all the little things you do as well as for a memorable 2010 Valentine’s Day. I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I do.

Guess I am getting too much into telling our own stories. Let’s move on to stories on baking for the week. As it was V Day, I wanted to bake some sweet stuff for the desert and at the same time, I want to apply some icing/deco. Cupcakes have been something that I always wanted to give a try but keep postponing it. Probably I was put off by the fact that it’s not unique as everyone is hyped over cupcakes over the past few years. Like hubby, I always like to be different too! Anyhow, I see things from a different perspective this time. The challenge with cupcakes can come from successfully decorating the cupcakes with an evenly smooth icing and nice deco. I love all the cute and lovely cupcakes that are decorated for all different occasions. Since it’s V Day, I thought of using some homemade vanilla butter cream frosting and decorating the cupcakes with some heart-shaped candies and chocolates.

While browsing for recipes, I came across this simple vanilla cupcake recipe from Cupcake Creation that came along with the recipe for frosting. I couldn’t believe that it was so simple to make cupcake. Basically, you just need a few ingredients. As I do not have self raising flour on hand, I substituted it with all purpose flour, baking powder and salt.

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup  butter – softened
• 2/3 cup  superfine (castor) sugar
• 3/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• a pinch of salt
• 3 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Steps:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Line a 8 medium cup cake pan, with cup cake papers.
3. Crack the eggs into a cup and beat lightly with a fork.
4. Place all the ingredients in a large bowl and mix until light and creamy.
5. Divide the mixture evenly between the cake cases.
6. Bake for 20 minutes until risen and firm to touch.
7. Allow to cool for a few minutes and then transfer to a wire rack.
8. Allow to cool fully before icing.

Vanilla Butter Cream Frosting

Ingredients:

• 1/3 butter – softened 
• 1/2 cup confectioners (icing) sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (for vanilla frosting) or 1 tablespoons cocoa powder (for chocolate frosting)
• 2 teaspoons very hot water

Steps:

1. Beat together the butter and sugar until well mixed.
2. Once well combined, add the combined cocoa powder and water. Beat until smooth and creamy.

The cupcakes turn out well and hubby loves it. I love it too as the texture resembles my favourite “ma lai koh” (standard steam egg cake). Probably I should replace the white sugar with brown sugar in the future to turn this recipe into the “ma lai koh” recipe. Overall, I am very satisfied with the cupcakes and will definitely bake it again. I should be more adventurous with the icing decoration next time. Hmm…next on my shopping list is a set of equipments for making icing :-)

Happy Valentine’s Day to all!