Persistence Pays

It may have been cool outside but the atmosphere was heating up in the school library.
The silent auction was going on and my daughter was furious. Some one kept outbidding her. She was bent on having the Guittard chocolate sampler kit! So she parked herself next to the bidding sheet making sure that hers remained the highest bid.
She literally did not move from there!
Her persistence paid off and we came home with this:

The sampler contained Super Cookie Chips, so chocolate chip cookies were in order. These cookie chips are similar to the usual chocolate chips; flatter but bigger in diameter.

Unlike the kids, I don't really like cookies that much and neither do I like baking them. The oven I use is not that wide, I can't fit in two baking sheets side-by-side. It is quite a bother to baking cookies in batches. Which is why I prefer bar cookies.

Our preference is for chewy, slightly under baked cookies. Nuts are optional; sometimes they just get in the way of the chocolate chunks.
Mixing in cocoa powder is also something I avoid because then you don't have the contrast of colours where the chocolate chunks stand out. I know this is a visual thing but then you do eat with your eyes first.

This New York Times article suggests chilling the dough before baking.
Patience was in short supply so I baked some cookies right away and stashed the rest of the dough in the fridge. The rested cookie dough did result in a better tasting cookie. A sprinkle of salt did wonders for the flavour.

I used to be very skeptical of the salt-chocolate combination. A bite of the Scharffen Berger Milk Almond bar which contains sea salted almonds changed everything. This chocolate bar is to die-for.

The cookie recipe calls for nut butter. The first time I made these cookies, I naturally opted for hazelnut butter. But one couldn't detect any hazelnut flavour at all. The next time I made the cookies, I used cashew butter. Again, one couldn't tell there was any cashew in the cookies. Maybe not flavour but the nut butter does seem to contribute immensely to the texture.
May be it is the copious amount of chocolate that hides the nut flavour.

Chocolate Chip Cookies
(This recipe came from one of those recipe-exchange-chain emails. It sat the must-try folder for years before I actually gave it a shot.)

Ingredients
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
¾ cup sugar
¾ cup brown sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 ¼ cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt + more for sprinkling on top
14 ounces bittersweet chocolate, broken into chunks
¼ cup nut butter (peanut, hazelnut, or cashew)

Method
Don't preheat the oven just yet. The dough needs to chill in the fridge for a bit.

Sift together and keep aside the flour, baking soda, and salt.
Cream the unsalted butter and both the sugars for about 2-3 minutes.
Add the nut butter and continue beating for another ½ minute.
Beat in the eggs and vanilla extract.
Add the flour mixture and mix together till it all comes together. Do not overmix.
Mix in the chocolate.

Chill the dough in the fridge for about 30 minutes; makes it easy to handle.
When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 375F.
Prepare the baking sheets. Either spray with cooking spray or line with parchment paper.
Make the cookies as large or small as you want.
Just make sure you don't place them too close to each other on the baking sheet.
If you like, sprinkle a bit of salt on the cookies.
Bake them for about 9-12 minutes, just until slightly brown.
The baking time will depend on your oven and the size of the cookies.
Enjoy!

The yield depends on the size of the cookie. We got about two dozen generously proportioned cookies!

256 Types of Cookies

Multiple Choice Cookies

Years ago the kids gave me a couple of books by Joanne Fluke for my birthday.
'Since you like reading and cooking, we bought these books because the main character owns a bakery. The books also have recipes'. This is by far one of the most thoughtful gifts I've ever received.

We've been planning to cook from these books for a long time. This week we actually did. Yes, it was a collective effort. To be fair, my son did most of the work; I occasionally chimed with expert comments.

These cookies provide instant gratification. My son made these on his own and was immensely thrilled with himself. He definitely seems to have been bitten by the baking bug.

Multiple Choice Cookies

Ingredients
½ cup unsalted butter
1 can sweetened condensed milk
One ingredient from each of the following columns:

Column 1	Column 2	Column 3	Column 4
(1½ cups)	(2 cups)	(2 cups)	(1 cup)
Graham cracker crumbs	Semisweet chocolate chips	Rice crispies	Chopped pecans
Vanilla wafer crumbs	Raisins	Frosted cornflakes (crushed)	Chopped pistachios
Animal cracker crumbs	Chopped dates	Frosted cornflakes (crushed)	Chopped mixed nuts
Sugar cookie crumbs	Milk chocolate chips	Marshmallows, small	Chopped walnuts

Method
Preheat the oven to 350F.
Grease just the sides of a 13x9 in baking pan.
Melt the butter and pour it in the pan.
Sprinkle the chosen ingredient from column A.
Drizzle the condensed milk over the butter.
Sprinkle the chosen ingredient from column B, then column C and lastly the one from column D.
With the palm of your hand, press down the layers.
Bake for about 25 minutes.
Cool completely before cutting into bars.

Note: Given that there are four ingredients in each column, and four column in all, 4x4x4x4 varieties of cookies are possible.

I'm sharing these cookies with Bhags for her This book makes me cook event. These cookies were made from the Blueberry Muffin Murder.

Nankatai

My Aai made nankatai quite often (it definitely is nankatai and not nankhatai at least for us). Technically she didn't bake them, rather they were baked for us by a local bakery. We provided the raw material in the correct amounts (sometime even the prepared dough) and they did the rest. This happy errand was always mine. After handing over the ingredients/ dough, the clever thing to do was to arrive at the bakery a few minutes ahead of the pickup time. As more often than not, the baker would offer something right out of the oven. It could be a waati-cake (literally cake baked in a katori), a plain bun, or a khari biscuit. Bliss!

Since Aai's nankatai was made with Dalda (as was the nankatai made by my mother-in-law), I never thought of making nankatai any other way.
Recently I tasted nankatai made using butter. What a difference! It was so decadent.
The difference was not only in the taste, but in the texture as well. The vegetable shortening nankatai seemed much lighter and finer in texture than it's makhan counterpart.

Shortening is not the healthiest thing to use, but I don't worry about that too much as I make nankatai just a couple of times a year. Also, this is the only thing I prepare using vegetable shortening.

I especially like the texture of the vegetable shortening nankatai because of the associated childhood food memories and so continue to make it that way.
Though the the shortening contributes to the texture and general appearance, it does very little in the flavour department. Nothing a pinch of keshar and elaichi cannot fix. For even more flavour, I add some powdered almonds.

My kids just absolutely love this nankatai. Even more than chocolate-chip cookies, so that is saying something. It makes me happy to share my childhood foods and the memories that go with them. To see them enjoy such foods while (hopefully) forming memories of their own makes me uncharacteristically sappy!

Ingredients
1 cup sugar
1 stick (1 cup) vegetable shortening (I usually use Crisco)
a pinch of saffron, soaked in a little water
elaichi powder, to taste
3-4 tbsp ground almonds (optional)
1 ½-2 cups all purpose flour

Method
Preheat oven to 350F.
Grease a cookie sheet and set aside.
Cream together the shortening and sugar till the mixture is light and fluffy. A hand mixer works best for this task.
Add the saffron, elaichi, and almonds if using.
Add &frac12 cup all purpose flour. Using your hands knead this dough slightly.
Add more flour as you go along. You want a dough that is soft, moist, and smooth. Do not add more than 2½ times the quantity of the shortening used.
Use your finger tips to pull off a piece of the dough, or you could use a melon-baller. Roll in between your palms to form a ball.
Place the cookies on the sheet, about 2 inches apart. Sometimes I press each cookie with the tines of a fork.
Bake for about 15 minutes (oven times may vary).
After 10 minutes, keep a close eye on the cookie.
Take them out of the oven at the first sign of any browning around the edges.
Let them cool slightly before using letting anyone steal them for taste-testing purposes.
Enjoy!

A generous batch of the nankatai goes to Suganya's Vegan Ventures .