Of Chocolate and Chocolate Chip Cookies

I admit it. I love chocolate. Oodles and oodles of it if possible. Laced with caramel, especially. Milk is good, dark is better but it depends on what you’re doing with it. I think I prefer milk chocolate for munching and dark for baking. Unless it’s white, and then it’s good for everything! In this Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe I have used a mixture of all three 😉

I grew up in America, in New England. Massachusetts to be precise. And not very far from the town of Whitman where Ruth Wakefield owned the Toll House Inn and accidentally invented her famous Toll House Cookies in 1930. According to Wikipedia, “Wakefield is said to have been making chocolate cookies and on running out of regular baker’s chocolate, substituted broken pieces of semi-sweet chocolate from Nestlé thinking that it would melt and mix into the batter. It clearly did not and the chocolate chip cookie was born.” True American genius, that.

So thanks to Ruth Wakefield my waistline is much larger than it should be, and I honour her ingenuity and accidental invention far too often. One of the first things I learned to bake in Home Economics in Junior High School was Toll House Cookies and I have been making them ever since.

Normally, it takes ten minutes or so of frantic mixing to sift together the flour and dry ingredients, beat the butter and sugar into delicious fluffiness, then beat in the egg, then the flour mixture, and so on and so forth. I had to be really desperate for a chocolate fix to get out ingredients, mixer, beaters, two bowls, measuring spoons, measuring cups, spatula, and a butter knife to scrape the top of the cup for an even measure. As a result, I must have gone close to ten years without making a single batch of chocolate chip cookies. Imagine that!

But now that I have my Thermomix… it’s so fast and easy to make a batch of chocolate chip cookies I find myself making them way too often 😉

There is literally one minute of mixing time in the Thermomix to make a batch of really luscious cookies. And since virtually all the ingredients are weighed into the Thermomix bowl using its built-in weighing scales there’s no need for measuring cups, beaters, multiple bowls or that silly butter knife. OK, you still need the measuring spoons for a quarter teaspoon of this and a half teaspoon of that, but along with them and a spatula you don’t need anything else. Period. Oh, except an oven and a baking tray/cookie sheet.

UK Thermomix Director Janie Turner has spent countless hours adapting recipes for the Thermomix, and this one is her crowning glory as far as I’m concerned. It’s so fast and easy, and the procedure is so clever and works so well, I just love watching through the lid while the dough forms. The recipe was given to Janie when she was 13 years old (we start baking young in North America) and she has made countless batches with it  – and so have I!

Janie Turner’s Thermomix Chocolate Chip Cookies
From Fast and Easy Cooking
Makes about 3 dozen small cookies

Ingredients
150 g organic white flour
¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
½ tsp salt
100 g butter in small pieces
60 g granulated sugar
50 g soft brown sugar (use either light or dark, both work great)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
100 g jumbo organic oats
180 g chocolate chips (I used a mixture of milk, dark and white)

Method

1. Weigh all the ingredients except the oats and chocolate chips into the Thermomix bowl. Mix 30 seconds, gradually increasing from Speed 3 to Speed 5.
2. Scrape down the sides of the TM bowl with the spatula. Mix again 15 seconds/Speed 5.
3. Add the oats and mix 15 seconds/Speed 4.
4. Add the chocolate chips and stir in by hand with the spatula until evenly mixed.
5. Drop large teaspoonfuls on a baking tray lined with baking paper or a silicone sheet. Bake 15 to 20 minutes until just golden brown. Bake at 180° C /350° F/gas 4. Aga ovens: Bake 15 to 20 minutes in the Baking Oven or bake on rack set on floor of Roasting Oven 8 to 10 minutes. Cool on a rack.

Bon appétit !

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