Baking cookies always gives me wonderful memories. Of wonderful Saturday afternoons baking cookies from the box (hi, White King), and dunking them into cold, fresh milk. Yum.
When my older sister started baking stuff from scratch, I became her assistant. Measuring things, stirring the batter, or wrapping those baked goods into boxes. That however, wasn’t fodder enough for me to start venturing into baking on my own–until she left to work abroad.
Fast forward to 2014, when I started baking cookies for friends and family. Of course they weren’t perfect–but people gave me helpful hints as to the texture and taste of the cookies. I’ve made a lucky hit with red velvet cookies–a recipe I’ll have to reproduce as I have lost it through the deletion of my old blog.
It wasn’t until 2015 when I started giving out cookies to people from work. They received very mixed reactions–probably I flew too high! It improved last year, however, when I used this recipe–my go-to one fact, for a basic cookie recipe. But of course, there’s always room for improvement, and this year, inspired in part by Gemma Stafford’s Crazy Cookie Dough recipe, that I’ve made a drastic modification for my base cookie recipe. Based from the feedback of those cookie gift recipients, it was worth it.
This year’s “cookie theme” was “sweet and nostalgic”, using M&Ms and chopped chocolate as cookie toppings. I’ve always loved the M&Ms chocolates-darkly sweet under their coloured candy texture, reminding me of those coloured lights strung around our old Christmas tree for many years, which were both replaced, when I was twelve. The chocolate chunks serve as a reminder to me that while life will have those different sized hiccups, life will be sweet–work stress, academic worries, and mental health issues notwithstanding.
Here, I give you the recipe, which is inspired, in part by Gemma Stafford’s Crazy Cookie Dough Recipe. (view original here).
INGREDIENTS:
2 sticks butter
3 eggs
2 tablespoons vanilla
2½ cup brown sugar
3½ to four cups flour (the additional half cup, as desired; I used 3½)
½ teaspoon baking soda (aka bicarbonate of soda)
1 teaspoon salt
TOPPINGS: You can use any toppings you want! 🙂 For this particular recipe, I used just M&Ms and chopped dark chocolate.
INSTRUCTIONS:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (150 degrees Celsius), grease cookie sheet or pan,
- Cream butter thoroughly; add brown sugar until mixture looks like caramel.
- Beat in eggs, fold into mixture. Add in two tablespoons of vanilla.
- In a separate bowl, combine 3½ cup flour, ½ teaspoon baking soda, and 1 teaspoon of salt.
- Fold in dry ingredients to the butter, egg and sugar mixture, gradually, until dough mixture is smooth.
- Spoon dough into greased sheet, put in desired toppings.*
- Bake cookies for 10 to 15 minutes, or until golden brown.
*You have the option of chilling the dough before spooning it into the greased sheet. In my case, I immediately spooned the dough into the sheet. Will try chilling it next time, though!
Unfortunately, I was unable to take a picture of the final product. But I will take one soon when I bake this recipe again! And you can use this dough to make any cookies you want–so enjoy baking! 🙂
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