Double chocolate cookies

So I got myself another cookbook, which was actually a generous gift from him. Thank you, sweetie!
It`s Nigella Lawson`s newest book, Nigella Kitchen. I mean, who doesn`t love Nigella? First time I watched her TV show here in Japan (rare!) not knowing what her name was, I was just like, hey, this cooking show is good! One thing captured my mind was her whatsocalled mezzaluna, a half-moon shaped double handed knife (I finally knew the name from the book). Until now I`ve never seen anyone using that! But then years passed by and I have completely forgotten about the show (and her). Of course I have. Cooking wasn`t my thing back then. Or at least, I didn`t realize how I always enjoy watching food being cooked aside from eating itself.
And just last year, a friend of mine (big thanks, Ry!) who just looked at my food pictures mentioning about Nigella and I said, "Who??". So I quickly googled her and sure enough, it`s the gorgeous lady with her half-moon knife. I watched her videos on Youtube over and over again. Warm, cozy, and soothing are the impressions I got from the videos.
Anyway, I picked up something to make from the book, and it`s Chocolate chip cookies. Yes, from all of the oh-yummy!-I-want-this! recipes there, I chose that one. I sometimes don`t understand my self.


I know the name says choc chips, but I bought choc bars, which are cheaper yet with extra work on chopping them up. If you have choc chips, please, by all means, use them. You`ll be happier.
I was planning to use same amount of dark and white choc, but then he had been "stealing" the white bar every day until I noticed only half of it remained.I don`t know, husband..kids..they`re just the same I guess.

Chopping up the bar is quite a work. Watching a chef doing this very easily completely misled me. Place the choc chunks in a bag, shake it to mix them, and set aside.

Her recipe calls for melted unsalted butter, but I used margarine. Place it in a microwaveable container and heat up in microwave at 800 V for 1 min.

Transfer the melted butter to a mixing bowl and let it cool a bit.

Throw in sugar and whisk up. I only used caster sugar. Her recipe calls for brown sugar and caster sugar, but I`m running out of brown sugar. Pffff....I keep using different ingredients here...

Here`s how it looks like after 5 minutes or so.

Add some vanilla essence and beat in one egg yolk and one whole egg. She suggested using fridge-cold eggs. I haven`t researched the reason yet, but I followed it anyway.

Whisk up until the batter turns creamy.

Mix in flour blended with baking powder in batches.
By the way, you can start preheat your oven at 170 C now. 

Oh...heavy..heavy....I said it loudly hoping he would come helping, but nothing happened.

Fold in the choc chips chunks.

 Heavy...heavy..I said it louder, still nothing happened. Then I saw him wearing headphones.
Oh, maybe next time.

 
Line a baking tray with parchment paper. You can butter it of course, but I didn`t and there was no problem with it at all. Now, if you have an ice cream scoop, use it. I don`t have it, so I use my soup ladle. Did it work? Well, sort of. Only sometimes I needed to use my finger or spoon to help taking the dough out of the ladle.

Alright. Ready for baking now. Don`t they look like ice cream??

I kept checking if the "ice cream" melted. It did, but not as much as what I expected. Maybe more butter next time will do the trick.

So this, is how I expected how the cookies look like. Pretty, right?

And this, is my double chocolate cookies. They look way paler than the ones shown in her book.  Probably because of the no-brown-all-white sugar I used. And less pretty too, lol. Nevertheless, these cookies came out chewy and a bit bready inside with crisp edge.

The white choc bits inside totally rock! Next time I`d keep the choc bars in a locked place. Lesson learned.


Ingredients*:
300 g chocolate bars, chopped
150 g margarine (or butter), melted
200 g sugar (or use in 1.25:1 ratio if using brown and caster sugar)
1 whole egg, fridge cold
1 egg yolk, fridge cold
vanilla essence
1 tsp of baking powder (original recipe using 1/2 tsp of baking soda)
300 g flour

Bake in preheated oven at 170 C for 17 minutes
*I slightly modified the original recipe