A Chocolate Cookie Recipe That Others Will Rave About!

Author: Monica Latham
Chocolate cookie recipes are, without a doubt, the most popular of all. Very few can resist the temptation of a soft, gooey, chocolaty cookie.
This chocolate cookie recipe is for the true chocolate lover, combining the rich taste of dark with the sweetness of white chocolate. They are also among the easiest cookies to make as there is no rolling and cutting out shapes. Simply drop the mixture from a spoon onto a baking tray.
Ingredients
115 g / 4 oz unsalted butter
115 g / 4 oz / 2/3 cup light muscovado sugar (if unavailable substitute with dark brown sugar) 1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
150 g / 6 oz / 1 ¼ cups self raising flour
75 g / 3 oz / ¾ cup porridge oats
115 g / 4 oz dark (semisweet or plain) chocolate, roughly chopped
115 g / 4 oz white chocolate, roughly chopped
Preheat the oven to 190oC / 375oF. Line two baking sheets with parchment or baking paper. This will prevent the cookies sticking to the baking sheet and is preferable to greasing the trays. It also prevents them spreading too much during baking.
So that the butter is soft enough to beat easily, remove it from the fridge at least 30 minutes before you plan to start. Unsalted butter is the preferred choice, but if you are going to use margarine, choose the firm block type that is suitable for baking.
Using an electric mixer cream the butter with the sugar in a small bowl until the mixture lightens in color. The mixture should be well aerated and have a light and fluffy texture.
Add the egg and vanilla essence and beat until creamy. The eggs should also be at room temperature or they may curdle the creamed mixture.
Transfer the mixture to a large bowl and sift the flour over the mixture. Using a metal spoon, gently fold through the mixture. Add the oats and chopped dark and white chocolate. Stir until all the ingredients are well mixed.
Take small tablespoons of the mixture and place on the trays spacing them about 2 inches apart to allow room for spreading during baking.
Bake on the center shelf of the oven for 15 – 20 minutes or until the cookies begin to turn a pale golden color.
Remove from the oven and leave on the trays for about 5 minutes. Then using a wide, slotted spatula transfer to wire racks to cool completely. Your cookies will be soft when you first remove them from the oven, but will become crisper as they cool.
This mixture will make approximately 18 – 20 cookies.
Always buy the best quality chocolate you can afford. This is the one time when cost-cutting does not pay. The results are worth the extra cost. Of course the best way to buy it is by the block. Ideally it should contain 70% cocoa solids to achieve that rich chocolaty taste.
For best results it should be eating quality not compound. Other types contain other oils and ingredients and will give inferior results.

How to Make The Best Sugar Cookie Recipes Which Wow Everyone

Author: Monica Latham
Cookie baking is fun - particularly when you have simple and easy to bake sugar cookie recipes to follow. But the most enjoyable aspect is the decorating. This is what turns a plain ordinary cookie into an edible work of art. You really are limited only by your imagination.
The first step of course is to make the cookies. There is no creaming butter and sugar involved. The dough is worked in a food processor. Nothing could be easier.
Ingredients you will need:
9 oz / 280 g /2 ½ cups plain / all-purpose flour
5 ½ oz / 170g unsalted butter, chopped
Pinch salt
3 tablespoons caster / superfine sugar
2 egg yolks beaten with 4 tablespoons ice-cold water
Preheat the oven to 400oF / 200oC. Line two baking sheets with parchment or baking paper.
In the bowl of a food processer, process the flour and butter until it resembles coarse crumbs. Add the salt and sugar and process again until just combined, being careful not to overprocess the mixture.
With the motor still running, add the egg yolk mixture and process using the pulse button until it forms a glossy ball.
Remove from processer, wrap in plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.
Remove from the fridge and divide the mixture into smaller portions for rolling. While rolling one portion, keep the remainder refrigerated. Roll the dough out to a ¼ inch / 6 mm thickness. Using cutters, cut out shapes, placing the cutters as close to the edges as possible to minimise the number of times you re-roll the dough. Repeat with the remaining dough, then combine all the leftover dough and re-roll.
Place onto the baking sheets allowing room for spreading and bake for 10-15 minutes or until a golden color. Remove them from the oven and leave on the baking sheets for 2-3 minutes before lifting them onto wire racks to cool.
Allow to cool completely before icing and decorating.
Now comes the fun part, icing and decorating. Glace icing is perfect for this sugar cookie recipe. It can be drizzled over the top or piped into simple designs.
This glace icing recipe is sufficient to ice 24 cookies.
1 cup icing / confectioners sugar
A few drops of vanilla essence
1 tablespoon of hot water
A few drops of food coloring (if required)
Sift the icing sugar into a bowl then add the vanilla essence. Gradually stir in the hot water until the mixture is the consistency of thick cream. Add the water a few drops at a time until you have the desired consistency. If you find you have added too much water and the icing is too runny, simply add more icing sugar.
Spoon a little icing into the centre, then using the back of the spoon, spread out to cover the entire cookie. Glace icing sets very quickly, so if you are adding other decorations, you will need to work quickly before the icing sets.
Glace icing is also extremely versatile. It is perfect for feathering and drizzling.
To create a feathered effect, cover the cookie with icing as above, then pipe several straight parallel lines of icing in a contrasting color across the top. Take a toothpick and draw lines in the opposite direction, gently dragging the color through the icing.
Alternatively, pipe lines of icing, or, if you want to be adventurous, pipe designs over the tops of your cookies.
Really, the possibilities are endless.
Having a large collection of sugar cookie recipes that you can decorate in creative ways is great fun.

10 Basic Steps to Making Great Cookies

Author: Grandma Linda
Everyone likes cookies; kids, parents, grandparents, friends, and the list could go on.  There is just nothing much better than warm cookies right out of the oven to kids of all ages.  Baking cookies is a great way to get the kids involved in the kitchen even at an early age.  Even the little ones are so impressed by cookies "they made themselves" even though they may have only stirred the dough, added an ingredient, or sprinkled on some colored sugar decorations.  And homemade cookies are perfect for everything from welcome to the neighbor hood gifts, teacher gifts, holiday gifts, office treats, to just simply something to hand to daddy and say, "Look what I made for you".


Today we have some very good cookie dough in the dairy counters of our grocery stores to buckets of dough sold as fund raisers.  But baking your own good cookies is still something special.  Baking cookies with the kids is not only fun but it teaches them how to measure, a math skill they don't even realize they are learning.  It is also a lesson in organization as ingredients are gathered before the baking begins, a lesson in working with others even if it is just the two of you, and a lesson in cleaning up as the kitchen has to be cleaned afterwards.  Even if children aren't involved, becoming proficient with a certain cookie recipe gives one a sense of self and confidence as others come to expect and even request your "special" cookie.


Following are a few tips to help you bake great cookies from scratch, as the old-timers used to say:

1. Use good ingredients.  It is impossible to produce a first-rate product with second-rate ingredients.  For example, use butter instead of margarine.  So many of today's margarine products contain a large amount of water.  This will not produce a good cookie.  Forget about counting fat and calories when baking cookies.  Concentrate on a good product and don't over indulge on the finished product!






2. Use good utensils.  For example, invest in a couple of good baking sheets.  Good baking sheets will help you turn out a better cookie.






3. Use standard measuring cups and do measure the ingredients.  Baking is not the place to "throw in a little of this or that".  Use glass liquid measuring cups for measuring liquids.  You will be able to see the lines easily and the ingredients won't slosh over the sides.  Use nested measuring cups to measure dry ingredients.  Dry ingredients should be measured to the rim of the cup.  And use the right size.  Don't measure what appears to be a half cup in a one cup measure.  Get out the one-half cup measure.  It is no more trouble to wash one extra cup!






4. Use standard measuring spoons.  Do not grab a "teaspoon" from your silverware drawer to measure an ingredient.  Get out a measuring spoon and do it right.  The teaspoon that came with your silverware set will not measure an accurate teaspoon for a recipe.  And as with the cups, use the right size.  Do not guess at a half teaspoon in a one teaspoon size.






5. Use the proper baking sheets or pans.  Shiny metal absorbs less heat than the dark metal.  Dark metal may cause your cookies to over brown on the bottom, so the shiny metal is best if you want to produce a delicately browned cookie.  When baking bar cookies, it is especially important to use the proper sized pan that is called for in the recipe.  If you are on a limited budget and can only afford one or two quality pans, go for the cake or bar pans.  They can be turned upside down and used as cookie sheets.






6. Other important utensils.  To make your baking easier and more efficient, helping you to turn out a better finished product, there are some other utensils you should have on hand.  If your budget is limited, buy the utensils you will use most often (for other uses as well) and add the remainder gradually.  (Hint:  When family and friends ask what you want as a gift for holidays or birthdays mention good quality items you still would like to have.)  Some of these items are:  a good set of wooden spoons for creaming butters and sugars together, slotted spoons for efficient blending of ingredients that need to be mixed by hand, a good set of rubber or silicone scrapers or spatulas, sharp knives, a good set of cookie cutters, a set of heavy mixing bowls with rounded bottoms, large glass pitcher-style mixing bowl, quality wire cooling racks, and a good rolling pin and pastry cloth for use when making cut-out cookies.






7. Read the recipe carefully before beginning the mixing process.  You don't want to get started and realize you are out of a needed ingredient.  This will also let you know the particular basic method of mixing this recipe so you can have the proper utensils laid out.






8. Preheat the oven.  Before you place the cookies in the oven, the oven should be at the proper temperature. 






9. Watch your baking time carefully to avoid over-baked or underbaked cookies.  Always check your cookies at the minimum baking time given in the recipe, then you can bake them longer if needed, checking often.  An overbaked cookie is just not a good cookie.






10. Never substitute ingredients unless the recipe gives directions for doing so or you are well acquainted with the recipe and know exactly what you are doing.