{"id":4264,"date":"2015-05-31T01:54:44","date_gmt":"2015-05-30T15:54:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sasmonroe.net\/?p=4264"},"modified":"2015-05-31T05:02:57","modified_gmt":"2015-05-30T19:02:57","slug":"fatstries-and-chocolate-chip-cookies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sasmonroe.net\/?p=4264","title":{"rendered":"My friends: Chocolate Chip Cookies."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><center> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/sasmonroe\/17648291343\" title=\"Untitled by Syazwana Harun, on Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/c4.staticflickr.com\/8\/7792\/17648291343_534b3a8544_k.jpg\" width=\"1536\" height=\"2048\" alt=\"Untitled\"\/><\/a><\/center><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been craving for Chocolate chip cookies since i got here. Sure, gourmet chocolates are in abundance, pastries and breads but American desserts or at least the generic stuff that we&#8217;re used to like brownies, cookies, cupcakes are really hard to come by here. Particularly good ones. I think it was only quite recent that American inspired cafes started popping up in the city, and it seems that the bagel and cupcake wave is here to stay. I guess, I&#8217;m just going to have to wait a while until they&#8217;ve matured to the quality that i&#8217;m accustomed to \ud83d\ude1b <\/p>\n<p>I came from work exhausted, napped and woke up to the sun setting at 10pm. Because it was a Friday night, i decided to have a delicious conversation with my new housemate, Kitchen Aid. I got out my leftover salted European butter from  the fridge (well here it&#8217;s just called butter) an egg , some flour and a bar of Varlhona from the pantry and browsed the web for a chocolate chip cookie recipe that uses salted butter. <\/p>\n<p>I love salted butter, i grew up eating kueh-mueh made with Golden Churn..even after the controversy, it stays in the family like an adopted sibling. Unfortunately, i have not been able to bake with it as much as i want to. My enjoyment for baking with salted butter can only be fulfilled in certain baked goods like banana cakes and pastry dough for my portuguese eggtarts. I tried using them in my brownies but it failed to rise to the occasion. Read somewhere that the salt content may not work well in some recipes. Still, i like to keep some in the house, for those days when i crave for salted butter + Kaya on toast or salted butter on white rice + soy!!!!!!!!!!! <\/p>\n<p>The way they&#8217;re sold here in grocery stores is interesting. In Brunei the unsalted butter are always labelled clearly on their packaging, here, it&#8217;s the other way around.. although i&#8217;m not quite sure since the labels are in French or Dutch or BOTH (like having them labelled in both French and Dutch would make it any easier for a foreigner kan?), but i have an inkling that unsalted butter is just &#8216;butter&#8217; whilst the salted ones are clearly labelled. I need to get back to you guys on this. I&#8217;ve just bought a block without a label.. will let you know if my speculation is on point. <\/p>\n<p><center><a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/sasmonroe\/18270321411\" title=\"Untitled by Syazwana Harun, on Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/c1.staticflickr.com\/9\/8806\/18270321411_60b2b139e3_k.jpg\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1537\" alt=\"Untitled\"\/><\/a><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Another thing that confuses me is the fact that i have not once seen Belgian baking chocolate at my local Carrefour. I found some Valrhona ones the other day, but they&#8217;re French, not that i&#8217;m complaining but i just think it&#8217;s a little bit odd.. its either they really dont carry them in normal grocery stores..or it&#8217;s my deficiency in the French language.. for all you know they&#8217;ve probably been staring at me from a section of the grocery aisles calling out to me in French, &#8220;Mademoiselle siti, cest moi!!!! le chocolat pour baking!!! &#8221; and i&#8217;ll be like &#8220;Ai&#8230;.kacang&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p><center> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/129311136\" width=\"700\" height=\"500\" frameborder=\"0\" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/129311136\">Come Alive<\/a> from <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/user40637662\">Syazwana<\/a> on <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\">Vimeo<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p> <\/center><\/p>\n<p>I love me some quality baking chocolates and i personally think that the best way to enjoy them are in chunks..be it in brownies or chocolate chip cookie and ice cream. You can&#8217;t really appreciate its quality when you&#8217;re incorporating them into cake batters. I also prefer using them in all-chocolate baked goods, the ones that are meant to be chocolatey in texture macam mousse kah.. pudding kah..those molten lava cake things kah ganache kah&#8230; So anyway, that&#8217;s exactly what i did. i chopped them up and folded them into my cookie dough mixture, chucked  them in the oven and 7 minutes later i made myself a new group of salty-sweet-chocolatey friends, took pictures of them, tagged them on instagram and happily devoured them with a tall glass of milk. <\/p>\n<p><center> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/sasmonroe\/18265201412\" title=\"Untitled by Syazwana Harun, on Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/c1.staticflickr.com\/9\/8777\/18265201412_3b51ad6eeb_k.jpg\" width=\"2048\" height=\"2048\" alt=\"Untitled\"\/><\/a> <\/center><\/p>\n<p>I adapted <a href=\"http:\/\/www.davidlebovitz.com\/2010\/08\/salted-butter-chocolate-chip-cookies-recipe\/\">his <\/a> recipe, changed the ratio of caster to brown sugar ever so slightly and they came out wonderful. I didn&#8217;t include any nuts in the recipe but it could&#8217;ve benefit from a sprinkling of nutmeg and cinnamon. The recipe&#8217;s also a good base for other flavoured salted chocolate chip cookies.. an image of matcha cookies with white chocolate chunks just popped up in my head as i&#8217;m typing this.<\/p>\n<p><center> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/sasmonroe\/18268912825\" title=\"Untitled by Syazwana Harun, on Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/c1.staticflickr.com\/9\/8762\/18268912825_0e79721ba5_k.jpg\" width=\"2048\" height=\"2048\" alt=\"Untitled\"\/><\/a> <\/center> <\/p>\n<p>I had left over dough and decided to make some more this morning in two batches using different cooking times &#8211; because i don&#8217;t have a life. <\/p>\n<p><center> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/sasmonroe\/18265086312\" title=\"Untitled by Syazwana Harun, on Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/c4.staticflickr.com\/8\/7739\/18265086312_24a7f14bfd_k.jpg\" width=\"1536\" height=\"2048\" alt=\"Untitled\"\/><\/a> <\/center><\/p>\n<p>The one with longer cooking time yielded a crisp textured cookie whilst the ones cooked slightly under stayed soft and gooey. I loved both. ok. i&#8217;m going to go talk to myself and follow the political developments of the  #LGBT Movement in the Republic of the Kardashians. <\/p>\n<p>Oh Bruce!<\/p>\n<p>Happy weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been craving for Chocolate chip cookies since i got here. Sure, gourmet chocolates are in abundance, pastries and breads but American desserts or at least the generic stuff that we&#8217;re used to like brownies, cookies, cupcakes are really hard to come by here. Particularly good ones. I think it was only quite recent that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dailies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sasmonroe.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sasmonroe.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sasmonroe.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sasmonroe.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sasmonroe.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4264"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.sasmonroe.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4277,"href":"https:\/\/www.sasmonroe.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4264\/revisions\/4277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sasmonroe.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sasmonroe.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sasmonroe.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}