White chocolate chip cookies

More cooking to catch up on from yesterday. The afternoon saw many people coming and going, so I baked a batch of classic American cookies to keep people happy through the packing, the hellos and goodbyes. This recipe comes, again, from Ina Garten, a US cookery writer, although I have slightly reduced the amount of white chocolate she calls for (for no better reason than simple lack of chocolate).

110g butter
100g light brown sugar
100g granulated sugar
1tsp vanilla extract
1 large egg
30g unsweetened cocoa powder
140g plain flour
Half tsp bicarbonate of soda
Half tsp coarse salt
300g white chocolate

The first thing was to make sure that absolutely everything was at room temperature, ie, that the butter was nice and squidgy. Otherwise making the batter is nigh-on impossible. Then I chopped the chocolate into squares - anything between 0.5cm to 1cm. This was easier than I had thought.

Then I beat the sugars and the butter together with an electric mixer until the mixture quite fluffy and the colour of very milky coffee (two minutes or so). I had to press little lumps of the brown sugar down with a spoon every now and then, as they seemed unwilling to get incorporated into the mixture.

Then I sieved in the cocoa powder and mixed until it was combined. Then in went the flour, bicarb and salt. I mixed here just until the flour had disappeared into the mixture - any more and there's a risk the batter will get too tough. Then the mound of chocolate squares, again mixed until just combined.

I had two baking sheets ready, one lined with greaseproof paper, and one with a sheet of Silpat, a French invention I bought recently which is a kind of reusable baking sheet liner. The results were quite different - the cookies stuck to the paper and glided off the Silpat, so definitely worth the modest investment.

I put the batter onto the sheets using an ice-cream scoop, which produces large golf-ball size blobs. I then wet my fingers and patted the batter down just a little. These cookies expand astonishingly on cooking, so I put no more than six cookies, well spaced, on each sheet (I got ten in all). Into the oven at 180C for exactly 15 minutes. At this point, they looked scarily undercooked, positively liquid. However, having cooled for a few minutes on the sheets, then transferred to a cooling rack, they are lovely, squidgy and chocolate-y. They are also the size of large saucers, so not for the faint hearted.

To my taste, they were a little on the sweet side. But the general view was that the sugar level was just right. This morning, I tried one that was left over. Not as moist and tender, but still perfectly respectable. This recipe will be tried again - perhaps with plain chocolate chunks next time.