Monday, October 29, 2012

baking...with my new Breville mixer

 I got this for $270 at the Good Guys - it has a scraper which scrapes the sides of the bowl but I found that I still had to scrape the bands of mixture that gathered on top of the scraper bit. I'm quite pleased with it after having used it just twice. my old cheap one died after less than 10 uses so i thought i'd get a proper one, and of course, those colourful KitchenAid ones were much coveted! but I couldn't justify spending that much, especially since my baking skills aren't up to that level!


These are from Mrs. Field's chocolate cookbook - I modified it a lot because her recipe involved putting melted chocolate into the mixture which I couldnt be bothered doing... 
One thing about American recipes is that they always end up being too sweet. I've learnt to reduce the sugar but even then it's just guesswork. These cookies still ended up being slightly too sweet although I'd reduced the sugar by 1/5. Perhaps american sugar is less sweet than ours  ? 
but, they were yummy anyhow! 

here's the modified recipe: 

cream 220g butter, 1 1/4 cups brown sugar, 3 eggs + 2 tsp vanilla
in another bowl, whisk 2 cups plain flour, 3/4 cups cocoa powder + 1 tsp baking soda
fold flour mixture in, then stir in 340g chocolate chips. 
preheat oven to 150C, drop by the tablespoons 2 inches apart. Bake for 18-22 mins, cool for 1 minute on baking tray, then move to a wire rack to cool completely.


1 comment:

Martha Jin said...

yummmmm....we were looking for choc cookies recipe. Have tried a few, but never close to something similar to famous amos yet. You're right about American recipes always being too sweet, we usually cut sugar by almost half. I'm also looking for a brand new mixed. The old one's hard to use, and seeing how the girls are getting into it, i might invest in a new one soon...fingers crossed.