.: Recipe : American Choc Chunk Cookies :.

I was google-ing for a chocolate chip cookie recipe when I stumbled upon this recipe by Maria Socratous (or so the site claimed).

And coincidentally, my multi-talented friend, who has the greatest passion for cooking and baking, swears that this is by far the best chocolate chip cookie recipe she has come across, so I would take her word for it.

The recipe below:

American Choc Chunk Cookies
Makes12

300g plain chocolate
100g milk chocolate
100g light muscovado sugar (a type of unrefined brown sugar)
85g butter at room temperature
100g crunchy peanut butter
1 medium egg
½ tsp vanilla extract
100g self-raising flour
100g large salted roasted peanuts

l Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan 160°C/gas mark 4. Chop the plain and milk chocolate into chunks. Melt 100g of the plain chocolate over a pan of simmering water.

l In a bowl mix together the sugar, butter, peanut butter, egg, vanilla and melted chocolate. Stir in the flour, all the milk chocolate chunks, the nuts and half the plain chocolate chunks.

l Drop big spoonfuls in 12 piles onto a baking sheet leaving room for them to spread. Stick remaining chocolate chunks into the cookies.

l Bake for 10-12 minutes until they are tinged very slightly darker around the edges. They will be soft in the middle but will crisp up as they cool. Leave to cool and firm up before transferring to a cooling rack. Cookies will keep crisp in an airtight tin for 3-4 days.

And since I have the habit of adjusting recipes according to my own whims and fancies, this shall be the FIRST that I follow without any modification!

So I will need to purchase a bottle of chunky peanut butter and some roasted peanuts! Can't wait *excited*! :)

Updated :

This was a D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R!

I guess baking cookies isn't my forte! After mixing all the ingredients up, exactly as per stipulated in the above recipe, the cookies dough looked really soft and gooey. I went online to check to make sure I wrote the right recipe down. After confirming and double confirming this, I put in my 1st batch of cookies, only to take it out and realise it swell two times its original size - I kid you not! And nowhere did this recipe of my friend's website that mentioned that this is the case. Bear in mind I am a newbie when it comes to cookie, so I was absolutely clueless and got the shock of my life when I took out a saw my 8 tiny cookies before consolidated into one giant cookie!

2nd batch, I was more wiser - I space each cookie out more, and reduce its size to half compared to the 1st and it did come out ok, but.... it wasn't as "crispy" as I expect it to be, albeit, a lil too soft. I have still no idea what could possible have went wrong, as I followed the recipe to the dot. Perhaps this has thought me that my instincts and intuitions should not be ignored, even when it comes to cooking/baking.

Anyways, I think I will shy away from cookies for now and stick back to my comfort zone - baking cakes and roasting chickens and making pastas.

Gosh, it was such a horrifying experience!