This is what I baked last night
* 1 batch of Anzac biscuits
* 1 batch of chocolate chip cookies
* 1 chocolate mud cake with chocolate frosting, well 1 batch which I split over 2 small tins - so does that count as 1 mud cake or 2? :)
And this is what I have just finished baking
* 1 batch of chocolate chip cookies
* 1 butter/pound/madeira cake (call it what you will, I've decided they're all the same to me), and again the mixture was enough to split between two small tins
Now, at the beginning of the week I was actually planning to bake everything in the lists above, aside from the extra batch of choc chip cookies tonight, over 2 days (initially 1, before I realised that I was being far too ambitious if I didn't want to sacrifice my sleep - and I'm not *that* crazy yet). My excuse for this baking overall was that it is almost Anzac day, so the good people at work should be given the opportunity to experience the humble Anzac biscuit, and also being rather close to my birthday, additional treats would be permissible. And because of this birthday excuse, 2 cakes must surely be allowed, rather than one, with the added bonus of being able to use up the excess buttermilk from the mud cake in my butter cake (can't let all that buttermilk go to waste!).
The weak link here (if you don't consider this entire post a severe weakness) is that 2nd batch of chocolate chip cookies... I really wasn't intending on baking TWO batches. But I had the misfortune of not quite remembering which recipe I used to make some pretty close to perfect chocolate chip cookies (the question of what exactly is the perfect choc chip cookie deserves its own post, which I'll most likely end up posting in my baking blog, along with my recipe so I never find myself in this situation again!). So the batch I baked last night was severely disappointing. The cookies were too chewy in a cake-like way, rather than chewy in a perfect-cookie kind of way. I had a strong suspicion that it was the soft brown sugar I'd used, and the only way to know for sure was to bake the exact same recipe again but with golden caster sugar (like my instincts told me I should have done in the first place!) And lo and behold, tonight's cookies turned out just the way they were supposed to! So please remember, next time I bake choc chip cookies (and until I get around to posting my recipe on my baking blog) - always use caster sugar, NOT soft brown sugar like the original recipe says!
You can even *see* the difference...
definitely looking like cake
don't these look so much better?
So, mad, most definitely.
But the satisfaction of producing those gorgeous looking (and tasting!) cookies tonight was worth it.
