Helooooooooooooooo!! It feels like it’s been a while but it really hasn’t been thaaaat long. Friday is my FAVORITE day of the week so Friday past, after work and some red wine I decided to make chocolate chip cookies for the week ahead.
I bought the chocolate chips quite a while back as I had this idea in mind for a while. I’m not a GREAT lover of biscuits, just feels like so much work – hard on the teeth. Cookies are different to biscuits as they are softer in texture.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup butter, melted and cooled
• 1¼ cups light brown sugar
• ¾ cup castor sugar
• 2½ cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 large eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 cups chocolate chips
• Flaky sea salt

Method:

Mix together flour, salt and baking soda – set aside.
Combine the brown sugar and icing sugar in another bowl, make sure all the lumps are broken up. Add the melted butter and whisk vigorously.
Add the first egg to the sugar & butter mixture and mix thoroughly, add vanilla essence, whisk again then finally add the 2^nd egg and whisk thoroughly.
Add the dry ingredients to this sugar-butter-egg mixture and mix well. There should be no traces of the dry ingredients in the mixture.
Once thoroughly mixed add the chocolate chips and mix well to ensure the chocolate chips are evenly spread.
The batter is quite wet – don’t worry
Allow it to set in the fridge for about 10 minutes or as long as you can, overnight even.
Preheat the oven to 190 degrees
Line a baking tray with parchment paper (whatever that is! I used wax paper and sprayed some cooking spray on it and it worked fine)
After your batter has rested in the fridge the ideal tool to use is an ice cream scoop to scoop individual portions on the baking tray and sprinkle a tiny amount of flaky sea salt on the top.
I know it seems big/high but it works as the cookies flatten while baking.
Don’t add too many portions on the tray as the biscuits do expand while baking – I made about 6 at a time.
Bake for 10 – 15 mins –watch them! Once you get a golden top and the edges are baked – they will be done.
My 1^st attempt was a FAIL!

2^nd attempt my friend suggested I make them smaller as I was using 2 tablespoons to sort of get the ice cream scoop look. This worked but the bottoms were burnt :-/
My oven gave me A LOT of grief, the top element was NOT on when doing an inspection after attempt 1 so I fiddled with the heat and the settings – my third attempt was a success 😀
The cookies tasted amazing even though Claud called it “vetkoek biscuits”
It is important to let the cookies rest for about 5 minutes once you remove them from the oven as it comes off the wax/parchment paper MUCH easier – learnt this on the second attempt.

What I learnt –

• Maybe don’t have too much red wine
• Know your oven – the temperature of recipes especially when baking plays a big role
• Use decent chocolate chips – Woolworths has the good, melt in your mouth kind
• Invest in a cookie jar
• Improvise J