to be or not to be..

Kids, stay in school. I mean it. Stay in school; as long as you possibly can. Because, trust me on this, when you get out you will be expected to get and keep a job which is hardly as glamourous as you might imagine and when I say you I mean me. Ok, I didn't mean to sound like Bob Saget prologue-ing an episode of How I Met Your Mother, but this whole having-a-job thing is really stressing me out. Specifically the part where I'm supposed to do university all at the same time. See, I have this new job. It involves a lot of web design and programming which I love so it's an awesome position. The pay is good. My boss is great. But, and that's a big but, the honeymoon phase has hardly began and already I'm faced with a dilemma. Midterms are coming up next week and I've just been informed that I will be working on a site which has to be up by the end of that same week. Whut?

Sigh. So that's that. I have no idea what I'm gonna do. Do you think sleep is a necessity or more like an optional kinda thing?

On a happier note, I've started getting orders for my cupcakes & cookies this past 2 weeks. So stoked about that. Maybe that's what I should do. Give up on this whole computer nerd thing and open myself a pretty little bakery or cupcakery. Is that a thing, cupcakery? it should be a thing.

see cookie, eat cookie..

These past couple weekends have not been kind to me. I've looked forward to them being nice and relaxed and so far this has not been the case. It's no one's fault but my own of course, I'm a crammer. I fill my weekend itinerary with way to much stuff. Stuff, that on it's own, can be fun and relaxing but when crammed with a myriad of other "fun and relaxing" activities mutates into quite the stressful monster. One of those activities is baking. Besides being marred by my unrealistic expectations, these past few weekends had also been the love children of various special occasions for which baking was called for. The endless birthday cycles of friends and family members, not to mention the lunar new year this last weekend, my oven was logging in some serious overtime.

Sufficient to say, at the end of each and every one of those occasion I was exhausted and could barely look at my oven without cringing at the thought of undertaking another baking project anytime in the near future. But then, divine intervention... a friend of mine has stumbled upon a chocolate chip recipe and thought of me. How kind. The next thing I know, sitting in my inbox was an email, describing in excruciating details, all the wonders of this recipe and before I knew it, I was sold. The strong yet misguided contempt that I had for my oven, so five minutes ago.

Chocolate Chip Cookie

adapted from the New York Times

Now, you should know that this is the best homemade chocolate chip cookies recipe ever. I know I said that quite a lot around here but what can I say, I am an awesome recipe hunter. 

• 2 cups minus 2 Tbsp. (241 gr) cake flour
• 2 cups minus 2 Tbsp (241 gr) bread flour
• 1 ¼ tsp. baking soda
• 1 ½ tsp. baking powder
• 1 ½ tsp. coarse salt (if you absolutely can't find coarse salt, such as kosher salt, then I guess you can use ordinary sea salt)
• 2 ½ sticks (1 ¼ cups; 283 gr) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 ¼ cups (10 oz.) granulated sugar
• 1 cup plus 2 Tbsp. (8 oz.) palm sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 500 gr bittersweet chocolate chips or chunks, preferably about 60% cacao content.

Firstly, combine flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Whisk well; then set aside.

Using a mixer, whisk butter and sugars until very light and fluffy, about 3 to 5 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Mix in the vanilla. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula as needed. Reduce the mixer speed to low; then add dry ingredients, and mix until just combined. Add the chocolate chips, and mix briefly to incorporate. Press plastic wrap against the dough, and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. The dough may be used in batches, and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours.

Now, I can't stress enough how important it is to let the dough sit for at least 24 hours. Give the dough enough time to let all the flavours really bond together and I promise you it'll be worth the wait.

When you’re ready to bake, preheat oven to 350°F (180 Celsius). Remove the bowl of dough from the refrigerator, when you first took it out, it'll be quite hard so again give it about 20-30 minutes to soften slightly.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat.

You can use an ice cream scoop to mold the dough into individual cookie, it'll generally hold about 85 grams of dough, which makes for a 5-inch cookie but I find this a little big for my liking. I usually just do about 40 grams of dough per cookie and roll them into a ball, which can be a little bit messy but if you don't mind getting your hands dirty then this is the way to go. Another thing is while shaping the ball, you want to do it as quickly as possible, otherwise the dough will go all gooey in your hands.

These cookies need to enter the oven nice and cool, even verging on cold, so after shaping them if you feel they've melted a little bit, pop them back in the fridge and let them chill an additional 5-10 minutes.

Bake them for 15-20 minutes depending on the size of the individual cookies. When they're done, let them cool before putting them in an airtight container.

Yield: 48-50 individual cookie.