A note on baking

Attempted Nicole’s chocolate chip cookies tonight, decided that in all my time baking cookies my fondness for raw dough has prevented me from trying out longer baking times. First batch I made of these turned out a little too fragile in the middle, though they had a wonderful chewiness and flavor that reminded me of unbaked dough. Second batch more solid and next time I’ll try to get them all like this.

I like these cookies a lot. They’re chewy in the middle and crisp around the edges, and even though they haven’t much butter in them they somehow taste wonderfully buttery. The small amount of honey in the dough gives them an extra hint of flavor slightly reminiscent of Golden Grahams cereal. They’re fantastically easy and quick to bake, too. I think this is my new favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. Next time I might add some walnuts. I suspect they’ll make the texture a little more annoying to work with, but ever since I found Election Night consolation in Shirley Corriher’s Cookwise chocolate chip cookies, with Corriher’s delightful little trick with the nuts in the cookies, I haven’t been able to resist using it when possible. (I only managed this time because I’m all out of walnuts and pecans.) Here’s what you do: toast the nuts first in the oven, and after you take them out, you stir some butter into them while they’re still hot. They get luxuriously bathed in butter, and the roasting brings them to their full flavor, which avoids that icky raw taste you sometimes get when baking with nuts.

Not just luck but the Amateur Gourmet Secret Santa brought me to Nicole’s blog. I’m so glad, because every time she posts I drool over the photos and then save the recipe to bake next time I have the chance and all the ingredients on hand!

Go here for photos of cookies in lifelike detail! [link removed, but some photos re-uploaded below]

[This post was imported on 4/10/14 from my old blog at satsumabug.livejournal.com.]