Late to the party Confined Cookalong...

Sigh... Even with the time difference I really had intended to participate in the #ConfinedCookalong in real time. However, chores got in the way and by the time I'd been to the supermarket and had family drop in unexpectedly it was almost lunchtime and I hadn't even had breakfast yet, never mind done any baking.

But in the best traditions of the Confined Kitchen, I wasn't going to let obstacles get in the way of participation even though I'm very late to the party. I hadn't got my act together re brownies, but I did have the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies which allowed me to use some of the dark chocolate chips I'd bought on a whim from Whole Foods a while back and never got around to using.

I was kind of shocked to realise that I'd never actually made cookies of any sort before, never mind choc chip ones - a situation which could potentially cause my Canadian citizenship to be revoked!

I'm sure everyone has their own recipe for these, but the one I used was Bill Granger's Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe from his book Sydney Food, which is one of my most well used cook books. The only thing I changed was I only used 2/3 of the chocolate because there was a lot of chocolate in this recipe so I thought I'd mix in 2/3 and see if it then needed more - it didn't! Having said that a bowl of sugar and butter is always pleasing before I even got around to adding the chocolate...

The recipe said it would make 16 cookies and that's exactly what it did make. I didn't do the wrapping in cling film and making a sausage thing so that you can cut the dough into rounds because honestly the recipe didn't ask for it and I didn't think of it until afterwards, so getting the raw cookies onto the baking tray was a messy business, but also fun.

The recipe said 15-20 minutes in the oven. I checked them after 15 and they seemed overly squishy, so I left them for another 5 minutes and of course they were a bit overcooked and burned on the bottom, but still still, we have warm, slightly crisp, slightly squishy Chocolate Chips Cookies, so I'm calling it a fair fight and next time I'll do them for a couple of minutes less.

I never thought I'd say this, but I think that even though I only put 2/3 of the choc chips in, next time I might put even less in as they are a bit overwhelming. Or perhaps it's a case of chopping up the chips a bit so they're more evenly spread and not sprouting out the sides of some of the cookies like monstrous growths.

Anyway, reading Melinda's #ConfinedCookalong entry, it sounds like loads of fun was had by all, so I'm glad that it inspired me to try my hand at these even if I couldn't do it in parallel with the group.

Have a great weekend all and happy cooking.