Chocolate Chip Cookies

The only job I could find after graduation was as a cook in a nursery, I was there for a little under a year and learnt more than I ever expected to about chicken nuggets and fish fingers, but there was also room for something more like real cooking and I got to bake a lot of birthday cakes and biscuits. It's also where  first became really interested in food politics. I worked there for most of 1997 and as would have been the case in all the homes of the 80 or so children a day we cooked for meals were a mix of things made from scratch and those good old standbys like the chicken nuggets. When we cooked from scratch we weren't allowed to add any salt at all at any point to the food (something which has done me good in terms of my own salt consumption) but the chicken nuggets and turkey bites were stuffed with salt - it didn't make much sense then and makes less sense to me now. It was also where I really learnt about the economics of scale and how poor quality some of the things we used were.

My favorite biscuits were these chocolate chip cookies (I wonder what the difference between a biscuit and a cookie is? I think of these as very definitely cookies) which I haven't made in years. Back in nursery days the baking fat was a particularly nasty margarine (with pockets of oil and water in it - there was a slightly superior version for spreading but it was still pretty foul) and the cooking 'chocolate' was that odd stuff that isn't really chocolate. Because of the margarine the biscuits spread like mad on the baking tray, the 'chocolate' chips tasted slightly greasy, and the cookies always went really soft and broke apart very quickly but me and the kids were all fans and I always made extra so I could take some home.

Made with proper butter and proper chocolate chips however (not, I find, the same as chipped up chocolate) these are really really good (I'm wondering about adding a few oats or some chopped nuts another time). Squidgy in a good way and no longer prone to ripping apart they're just really pleasing and simple, they are also egg free which is great as I have a friend with an allergy. I bought a huge tub of chocolate chips in a foray to costco so can make loads of them (there you have the economics of scale again - small manageable packets of chocolate chips are prohibitively expensive, buy a kilo of the things and they cost a fraction of the price - you just have to hope they don't all melt together in their bucket on a hot day... I am very keen to find things to do with them mow I have them - other than eat them straight from the bucket of course)

I think this recipe originally came from an old Be-Ro flour book or something similar, I used to make it in industrial quantities but this amount is sensible - you get about a dozen digestive sized biscuits from it.

Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 5/180 degrees C. Beat 4 ounces of butter with 2 tablespoons of golden syrup and 3 ounces of soft brown sugar until light and fluffy, add 6 ounces of self raising flour and up to 2 teaspoons of milk if the mixture is very stiff. Throw in 4 ounces of chocolate chips and mix those in too. form into roughly circular dollops and put on a baking tray (probably with grease proof paper on it) and cook for 10 to 12 minutes, allow to cool thoroughly before eating or you get melted chocolate everywhere. They keep well for a few days in something reasonably air tight and have improved both my post gardening Sunday evening and Monday back at work. 

Shortbread

In honour of getting to watch The Great British Bake Off all the way through for the first time here's another baking post... 

Shortbread was something that we baked all the time when we were children. I remember it being something that was quick and simple to throw together with an almost impossible to forget recipe - 3 ingredients flour, butter, sugar - 2/3rd's as much butter as flour, and 1/3rd the amount of sugar. That's how we were taught at school (in Scotland where shortbread is a bit of a thing) and that's how I've always made it, but I hadn't made it for a long time.

Last week I saw a bit of Fiona Cairns Home of Fabulous Cakes though, and the shortbread she was making was definitely different. Apparently there have been developments in the last 30 years on the biscuit front which when it comes to shortbread feels almost like the reinvention of the wheel. Investigation in half a dozen baking books confirmed my suspicions; things have changed. I was having people round for whisky which is obviously an excuse for shortbread and after due consideration decided on the Fortnum and Mason version - where better to look for a classic? It seemed the simplest too. 

Not the best picture but they were eaten to quickly to take another.

The secret here is rice flour of which I've happily had a bag in the cupboard for some time just waiting for a biscuit project. The recipe calls for 150g of plain flour, 60g of rice flour, 150g of butter, and 60g of golden caster sugar. It's a lot of butter and that along with the rice flour gives a very short dough and a very crisp biscuit.

I'm very grateful to have a food mixer these days, it allows for some short-cuts and is particularly helpful when you don't want to overwork a dough/get your hands dirty. I over softened the butter so opted to chuck everything in together and mix it up quickly. Ideally the butter and sugar would be creamed first and then the flours quickly worked in before the whole lot was pressed into a tin and scored into 14 fingers then baked for 30 mins, removed from the oven, re-scored into fingers and baked again for another 30 mins. I decided to cut my shortbread into hearts instead and as it was thinner it only needed about half an hour in a low oven ( 150 degrees C/ Gas mark 2). The recipe didn't mention resting the dough, but I did for a bit anyway, mostly because I had to go out and buy milk.

The resulting shortbread was definitely better than the slightly tough sort I vaguely remember from times past. These particular biscuits also taste incredibly like the sort you buy - in a good way, and are destined to make many reappearances whenever I can think of an excuse to bake them.        

Not exactly perfect but...

I made biscuits – specifically St Patrick’s Day themed biscuits – shamrock/clover shaped affairs for the benefit of the blonde who I hoped would be impressed. She was convincingly enthusiastic so I feel pretty chuffed which is just as well because getting the green off everything is going to be a whole new challenge.

I’ve been eying up ‘The Biscuiteers Book of Iced Biscuits’ for a while. I don’t think I’ll be buying it (but wouldn’t turn my nose up at a copy if anyone wanted to give me a present) it’s such a very pretty book with some stunning ideas, but this kind of decorating takes a lot of time, a lot of patience, and a steady hand. I hope I’ve picked up enough hints from my covert browsing to have a go at basic stuff but honestly don’t have the patience or steadiness of hand required (the time is a whole other issue).

My biscuit recipe was from Nigella’s ‘How To Be A Domestic Goddess’ (I think they’re called cut out biscuits or butter biscuits or something very like – either way I can eat a lot of them and they hold their shape well) but I imagine any much loved biscuit formula would do the trick – and now for my distilled decorating knowledge – we can all have green sticky kitchens now.

Having made biscuit dough, chilled biscuit dough, rolled it out, squidged it back together, and cut out biscuit dough before finally baking into biscuits and allowing to cool - mix your icing. It should be royal icing which it seems easiest to buy in packets you just add water to (no raw egg to poison myself with thank you very much). Ignore the instructions on the packet – they are only a distraction. For each colour in the design (see how I did a green on green with only green thing – it’s because it was easy that way) there needs to be some thickish icing to pipe an outline in and much thinner flooding icing. That’s icing thick enough to write with and dry fast, and far thinner than I imagined icing that wants to be able to ‘flood’. It helps to have a vast array of icing bags, nozzles and little squeezy tube things to put icing in. The icing goes a lot further than I expected it to – this never happens with cakes.

Edible (or at least non toxic) glitter is the baking equivalent of candlelight. It makes everything pretty and covers up an icing technique I can most kindly describe as naive (I need a lot more practice okay- I admit that). I will be getting more glitter.

The icing will make the biscuits a bit soft – when it’s basically dry re-bake in a low oven (about 100°C) for 10 minutes or so to crisp them back up.

That’s it – that’s what I’ve learned. I want to make Easter biscuits for friends and family – so let me assure you would be recipients that if I do this it’s a lot more effort that buying an egg, so even though I’m blatantly embarking on this project so I can purchase more squeezy bottles and cookie cutters (love them) and will obviously be enjoying myself – it really is all about you!