The Famous Choc Chip Cookies Diary

I like to bake (in case you readers do not know) but i've never actually blogged about this passion of mine or showed some baking procedure. So I suddenly decided, hey why not do it now? Instead of highlighting and bombarding you readers with my glorious travelogues and photos, in the process possibly inducing salivation and awe at the adventures, mayb I should switch it up a little, you know, like comfort food after days of gourmet cuisine or plain water after downing bottles of alcohol! So what better to blog about then my critically acclaimed Chocolate Chip Cookies!

It all started with an email from an old friend titled 'Famous Chocolate Chip Cookies', which described the recipe as THE RECIPE for Famous Amos Choc Chip Cookies! Knowing that I'm an avid baker, my friend emailed me the recipe and I decided to give it a try! Turned out, it's actually delicious!! But of cos, Famous Amos had come out to deny the authenticity of the recipe. But who cares! It tastes great! So from then on, it's become a tradition for me to bake this recipe once a year (only once, cos it's a time-consuming, back hurting exercise), and normally for Xmas or latest New Year.

No, i'm not selling the cookies. I give them out to those lucky few (you know who you are) and these cookies have been tried and tested and praised over the years (>6yrs and counting). There are even those who requested for more after 1st round, but sorry, supply is limited, one person gets only 1!

This year, or rather last year, due to my travelling, I was not at home to bake them for Xmas, or even New Year. And I thot that I would NOT bake them at all, but suddenly i thot - "Hey, Y break the tradition?" And since Chinese new year is coming, might as well bake them for that occassion! So after shopping for the ingredients, I set out to work...

Gathering the ingredients, I decided to only bake half portion of original recipe (which is what I normally do) cos the full recipe will take me like AGES!! Too tired to pull the entire recipe, you'll know how tiring it is to actually complete just half a portion

The ingredients - Flour,oatmeal,choc,chips,butter,sugar,eggs,vanilla essence + most important =Perserverance

So all you gota do is cream the wet ingredients, add the dry ingredients and wala!

Almost done. At this point, muscles are required to mix the batter

Chips and everything else added and mixed. It pays to train your arm muscles on a regular basis. This is hard work! Beats 10reps of 3kg dumbells

Spooning bite sized portions on the baking tray. If you want to get down and dirty, u can use your hands to shape the dough

Actually the recipe calls for using hands to shape the dough, but i don't wana get my hands dirty haha. Also, note that my cookies are small, really small. Not like those Mrs Fields gigantic cookies. I like it small, cos it's crunchier that way. It gets slightly chewy when it's bigger. And it's looks more when you pack alot of small pieces, compared to 3 big pieces hahhahha

And after about 10minutes, 'ding'! They're done! Make sure to let them rest on the tray for a few minutes before removing them to completely cool off on a rack or just on plates

YumYum! Feast your eyes on these lovely crunchies!

Cooling off the cookies

That's the size of 1 cookie, comparable to the size of my thumb haha

And after 2.5hrs of constant non-stop baking in 2 ovens simultaneously working overtime, I finally finished the entire batch! Yes, that' 2.5hrs of baking NON-STOP!! Excludes time taken to prep the ingredients and mix them (that takes about 30-40mins). And mind you, it was non-stop! No time to go pee-pee or drink water. That's y i always feel damn dehydrated and tired after completing the batch. Cos the process is like 1st tray in, 10mins start, prep 2nd tray for 2nd oven, pop 2nd tray in, start prepping another tray for 1st oven, 'ding' 1st oven done, take out 1st tray to cool, quickly pop another tray into 1st oven, 2nd oven 'ding', take 2nd tray out, prep another tray.....and so on and so forth until u get down to the last cookie dough and you go 'Phew' So imagine baking the full recipe.... FYI i only did that ONCE.

The results -2 medium containers, 1 peanut butter sized container and 1 small container

>3hrs of effort translated to only 4 containers hahah...Very Very hard work! And the hardest part? The cleaning up! Damn! Worse than washing the dishes! Cos of all that doughy material, it's more difficult to clean.

So who gets these lovely cookies?? Heheheheheheh