TK: My Newbie Cookie Experiment: Nutella and Chocolate Chip Cookies

I may not be the best cook out there but I take pride in what I make. The food that I bring in the office are usually hits (my cheesy bacon potato and seafood chowder to name a few) and it is just fitting that I join in on the bandwagon of baking.

My unit is not huge enough to handle an oven so I recently brought in the one I bought before for my polymer clay hobby back then. I haven't baked any clay there for a very long time so I think it's now safe to use. 

My oven isn't really large, it's just an over the counter type that may be able to fit a chicken but not a full sized tray of lasagna. And since this is the first time I will bake, and I heard it's an exact science (my estimated guesses when it comes to cooking would never be in handy here) so I must follow instructions well. I also chose a very easy recipe to boost my morale with lesser room for any error. 

For my first bake, there are only 4 ingredients: 1 large egg, 1 cup of flour, 1 cup of nutella and 1 cup of chocolate chips.

FLOUR

I even bought a dry measuring cup to make sure that my flour is precisely measured. I hate the bitter taste of uncooked flour so this is to me, an important factor in baking I would like to be accustomed to.

NUTELLA

Well I was being scrimpy so instead of buying a liquid measuring beaker  I used the dry measuring cup. Don't you worry I bought one the day after. 

CHOCOLATE CHIPS

I honestly forgot I needed chips. I bought it together with my flour in hopes that I can use it somewhere else. Little did I know that it is really a part of the recipe. I used GOYA chocolate buttons (or so what it looks like)

EGG

I did say 1, but I used two. I will explain later.

So first of all I grabbed whatever that would pass off as a bowl. I don't have any that is large enough so I used an Ice Cream tub that I have in my tupperware stash. I've put in the flour, one egg and the nutella for mixing. Earlier this week I was able to buy an Oster machine that has a handheld mixer, a sort of masher and a food processor in one. I used this in mixing all 3 ingredients and was worried at how it ended up. It was so dry the mixer is throwing some flour due to it's density. So I just broke one of the golden rules of baking. I've deviated from the recipe. I added another piece of egg.

It must be because our large eggs are not exactly large compared to other countries but adding another one made all the difference. The consistency of the batter (?) have greatly improved:

 

When everything is mixed, I've put in the goya chocolate chips. I called them buttons because they looked more like buttons and are almost like 5x bigger than your average chocolate chips. While I was also mixing I have prepared my oven to preheat at 350 F (around 173 something in Celsius I think) for 10 minutes. I also have my parchment paper ready on my baking pan.

The first batch that I've made were all out of me assuming, since I simply dropped the batter via spoon directly on the paper. I really thought they'd take shape once they were heated but then they stayed the same :-(.

So for the 2nd batch I made sure to make it a bit rounder than before. The first times made me hypnotized on the oven door looking at how it changes from very shiny brown to dull, a signal that it is already cooked (I baked mine 13-15 mins)

The entire batch I had left to cool and stored in ziplocks so that I can bring them in the office. So far the reactions were good! I never thought my success rate with this would be high!

Next time: Brownies!