My Best Friend's Cookie

My best friend and her family have been frequent consumers of my baked goods. Even though they live on the other side of the country, I post them packages of food and visit as often as possible, cooking in their kitchen whenever they leave me unattended for more than five minutes.

The first time I stayed in their house her husband's first words to me were - what are you cooking for me? They both periodically sends me recipes they'd like "for next time". In fact, her husband sent me one as I was typing this very post.

One of the first recipes my best friend sent me was for brown butter chocolate chip cookies, stuffed with Nutella and topped with sea salt. I had made her sea salt chocolate chip cookies several times before and she was looking to up the ante.

Until recently Liv & her family were the only people I had made these cookies for. And the only reason that changed was the sad, pouty puppy dog eyes she threw me when she realized the cookies I had made for our favorite musicians were not her cookies.

We were headed to a concert and I had a batch of cookies prepared that Liv had mistakenly assumed were of the Nutella stuffed variety. This discovery took place over Skype the night before the concert and after the shock wore off her insistence that we needed to make those cookies won me over.

What resulted was me giving her instructions on measuring ingredients and the equipment I would need her to bring from home to our hotel room. The following day, I made the cookies in our hotel room with her pre-measured ingredients and success - the musicians they were intended for were more than happy with both their batches of cookies.

These cookies are beyond anything you can fathom without having tasted one. The browned butter makes the dough rich and deeper tasting. The sea salt enhances and sharpens the chocolate flavors. And the Nutella, well, the Nutella provides a creamy center that oozes out when you take a bite. It truly is impossible to imagine a better cookie.

I made another batch of these cookies this week and discovered an ingredient substitution that can easily be made without any impact on taste. The original recipe calls for natural Greek yogurt. It's an easy ingredient to forget when you are compiling a shopping list, something I can personally attest to. This batch I actually substituted sour cream for the yogurt with amazing success.

The change was so successful I think I shall actually make it a permanent change to the recipe. I'll have to make another batch soon for my best friend so I can gauge her reaction to my recipe adjustment. They are her cookies after all.

Cheers,
Joo

Change It Up

When I lived in New York City I was spoiled for choice in places to eat, cupcake shops, patisseries, coffee shops, cozy English style cafes, just about anything you can imagine. When it came to cookies though, one place that stood out, and earned repeat visits, was Milk & Cookies Bakery in Greenwich Village. Their Oatmeal Raisin Cookies were amazing and since they included raisins you could almost convince yourself they were healthy.

Until I discovered my favorite chocolate chip recipe at culinary school, the Milk & Cookies Chocolate Chip Cookies was my favorite choc chip cookie ever. There was just something about the texture that I couldn't put my finger on that made them superior to other chocolate chip cookies.

Milk & Cookies are also the only bakery I have ever discovered that marketed a packet mix that turned out cookies as good as the ones you could purchase in store. *shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, don't tell anyone that I have used a packet mix or two in my time* If you aren't a baker, or don't have time to bake from scratch and can get your hands on these cookie mixes, do it, they do not disappoint.

 Once I moved away from NYC and no longer had a steady supply of Milk & Cookies cookies just a few blocks away, it became time to hunt down their secret. Thankfully they made it easy - they have an official cookbook.

And it turns out, the secret to their texture almost does make them healthier for you than a standard cookie, it's old fashioned oatmeal, turned into dust with a food processor.

The other secret to the choc chip cookies is that they do not just use choc chips. They also add chocolate shavings, making the chocolate flavor infuse throughout the cookie rather than just in chunks when you encounter the chips.

This week when I decided to bake a batch, I realized I had no chocolate shavings but I did have a Terry's Chocolate Orange. I decided that shaving the chocolate orange with a vegetable peeler would not only be a great replacement for the shavings but would also add some extra subtle flavor to the cookies.


The addition of the orange infused chocolate added a depth of flavor and next time I might try this again with the addition of some orange zest or candied orange peel to add some more texture variations while enhancing the flavor of the chocolate.

So next time you are baking cookies, think about branching out and varying the kind of chocolate you use, switching it up can enhance the flavors and inspire ideas for future experimentation.

Cheers,
Joo

I love my mixer

Having moved around the world a lot, I've had to leave my old mixer behind more time than I care to think about.

The first serious mixer I owned all to myself was a Kenwood Chef, my parents gave it to me for my 21st birthday. Now, before you start to think that's not a very exciting birthday present, I begged for one. Begged.

I had spent my childhood using the Kenwood Chef that my mother was given when I was born (which still works - win one for good craftsmanship and longevity) and could think of nothing I wanted more than one of my own.

The first time I moved overseas I loaned my Kenwood Chef to a friend. When I moved back she was so distraught at the prospect of not having it anymore that my mother helped find her a second hand one at a garage sale.

In the year I was back living in Australia I used that mixer constantly, gearing up for what I knew was coming, culinary school. And again moving to the other side of the world where my mixer could not go.

Going back to being a student meant that I could not afford anything more than a set of hand beaters at home, but thankfully I had access to rooms full of mixers at school.

Except, suddenly, having access to all those mixers at school made me miss having one at home even more. What about those moment when I wanted to bake something that wasn't being graded? I only have so many hands and juggling hand beaters, bowls and flour is a recipe for clumsy girl disaster.

So when Christmas was approaching and my mother called to ask me what I would like, while I could name a list of things, right at the top was a mixer. I wanted a Kitchenaid and I wanted one in a fun color. Baking is fun, my mixer should reflect that (no offense to my trusty old white Kenwood that is sitting at my dad's house).

There was some debate about color, I liked the tangerine and the hot pink and red is always fun but green won the day. Green is my favorite color, how could I look past it?

So here she is, in all her glory, my Kitchenaid, who wonderfully helps me create all kinds of masterpieces leaving me both hands to work with.

Ready to Mix

Action Shot!

Do you have a mixer that you love? Or are you stuck in the horror that is hand beaters?

Cheers,
Joo

Choc It To Me

I have several 'go-to' cookie recipes that I have collected from different places, favorite cookbooks, classes at school, websites friends have emailed me with the subject line - make me this next time.

Not all of them include chocolate.

Sometimes I think they should.

I mean, doesn't chocolate make everything just a little bit better?

Well, not everything, but seriously who doesn't think adding choc chips to your favorite cookie is a good idea?

With this in mind, I baked two batches of cookies to test my theory, my favorite Peanut Butter Cookie recipe and a new recipe I recently discovered for Nutella Cookies.

Adding choc chips to a cookie recipe is the simplest thing ever. Wait until you have the dough combined, add the choc chips (I made a visual guesstimation on how much to add) and mix slowly until they are worked in. If you are worried about over-working the dough, once they have started to work in, stop your mixer and finish mixing it with your hands.

The Nutella Cookies are deliciously simple and almost end up at the consistency of brownies. I made them for the first time earlier this week at a friends house, I assume there are none left based on the reaction they got.

Mixed and shaped Nutella Choc Chip Cookie Dough
Sprinkled with Sea Salt

 My verdict on the Nutella Cookies with Choc Chips was that indeed chocolate makes a good thing better. Chocolate and hazelnut go so well together and the brownie like texture makes you feel like you could be eating a double choc brownie while the sea salt balances and enhances the flavors.

Finished Product.

Unaltered Peanut Butter Cookie Dough

The Peanut Butter Cookies are ones I make often, and have always gotten a great reception from friends I send them too. Like whoever the genius was that suggested mixing peanut butter and chocolate in the first place, I knew this could never be a bad idea.

In the interest of science (or eating, ok, so it was totally eating) I decided to make a batch of the dough and split it in half, adding choc chips to one half and baking the rest off as a normally would.

Choc'ed Up Peanut Butter Cookie Dough

And of course, since chocolate and peanut butter are almost as intertwined as peas and carrots or apple and pie the outcome was freaking delicious. DELICIOUS.

I'll still show you the control sample plain cookie because, well, those are delicious too but odds are the choc chips are making it into the recipe on a permanent basis now.

Control Sample - Sprinkled with Sugar Crystals

My NEW Peanut Butter Choc Chip Cookies

Of course, you can't add choc chips to every cookie recipe, I know some (my ANZAC Cookies for example) where it just would not work at all. But adding them to certain recipes can make all the difference between

"oh hey, a cookie, yum"

and 

Cheers, 

Joo

If you would like any of the recipes mentioned here, please let me know and I will email them to you.

Why Are We Here?

I guess the done thing is to maybe explain who I am and what I plan to talk about on here.

I can't really say I've blogged before, I have friends who do it but I'm shy in most circumstances (unless faced with my favorite musicians, and then suddenly, it's sociable Joo) so I sat quietly by. That is until I realized I like talking about food, and with my shiny new culinary degree I might just have things to say that people would want to listen to. So here I am.

For a personal background, I am an Australian living in America - although I can assure you I rarely utter words like g'day or crikey - I've traveled to various parts of the world and can't seem to sit still. Cooking may not have been my first profession, I worked in politics before I decided making people happy through baked goods was a more noble pursuit. I love music and the written word and nothing relaxes me more than standing in a kitchen, mixing something together. The rest of the world just slips away when I am baking, time ceases to move and I just know that if I mix the right things together, the right way, the end result will be perfect.

I am constantly baking and mailing cookies to my friends all around America, something one or two of them have suggested I should charge for and sell online, right now I just use them to bribe people.

So here I plan to talk about things I bake, and other culinary related things that inspire me, like amazing cookbooks or perhaps something I ate that was noteworthy. I can probably even answer questions if you have baked something that maybe didn't turn out right, or you need to know how to make something work properly. I might accidentally mention music or books a time too many, bear with me, they're the other things that relax me. And let's not forget the foodporn.

Cheers,
Joo

P.S. If I am talking about things I have made and don't post the recipe, just ask me for it and I will email it to you. I'm not hoarding them, I just don't want to bulk up posts with the technicalities!