I am meant to be in Amsterdam for a long weekend just now. Instead, the excitement of my day has been a trip to the supermarket and a decision to do some baking. When other people were stockpiling toilet roll, I think I was making sure I had enough baking ingredients - priorities, I haz them. If you haven't already come across Ella Risbridger's wonderful Midnight Chicken, then I can heartily recommend it, it's a great cookery book but it's also much, much more than that. The subtitle is "and other recipes worth living for", and right now I feel we all need the encouragement.
These are called Paris Cookies, and they are a fairly simple chocolate chip cookie. The starting point is melting 170g of butter. The butter in question was the only one in the supermarket when I went ten days ago. The actual butter shelves were empty, but someone had abandoned this pack by the (equally empty) toilet roll shelves - result for me. An egg, plus an extra yolk, 300g sugar and 250g flour were all in our cupboards anyway, and the 150g dark chocolate (chopped) was one of my stockpile things. Beat together the melted butter and sugar, add the eggs, a tsp of vanilla essence and beat until smooth. Add the flour and 1/2 tsp of bicarbonate of soda, mix until you have a smooth dough and then fold in the chocolate chips. Dollop just under a dessert spoon on dough per cookie on to baking trays and bake at 180C for 12-15 minutes.
I've just eaten two of them and I already feel slightly better about being in South London, not in Amsterdam.
These are called Paris Cookies, and they are a fairly simple chocolate chip cookie. The starting point is melting 170g of butter. The butter in question was the only one in the supermarket when I went ten days ago. The actual butter shelves were empty, but someone had abandoned this pack by the (equally empty) toilet roll shelves - result for me. An egg, plus an extra yolk, 300g sugar and 250g flour were all in our cupboards anyway, and the 150g dark chocolate (chopped) was one of my stockpile things. Beat together the melted butter and sugar, add the eggs, a tsp of vanilla essence and beat until smooth. Add the flour and 1/2 tsp of bicarbonate of soda, mix until you have a smooth dough and then fold in the chocolate chips. Dollop just under a dessert spoon on dough per cookie on to baking trays and bake at 180C for 12-15 minutes.
I've just eaten two of them and I already feel slightly better about being in South London, not in Amsterdam.
I hear you. I should have purged my work calendar of everything for the next couple of months, because all the reminders of what I'm not doing are Getting Me Down.
ReplyDeleteI do have Ella's book, and you've reminded me to open it again. Not so much for recipes, as that understanding of tough times. I could do with it too.
It's such a good read for that - one of the reasons I made the cookies!
DeleteI hadn't come across Midnight Chicken, but having looked it up, it's definitely going on my wish list of birthday/Christmas books, so thank you for that! Now I want chocolate chip cookies :)
ReplyDeleteI’ve tried. But too much soda and little overcooked. Now I’ll need a lot of tea and milk to sink them into. And I’ll have bases for many cheesecakes.
ReplyDelete