I've been wanting to write more about food on my blog but as
I am clearly not an expert on it, I had an idea to get people who are to do so instead. This idea led to the birth of my first Guest Feature by
JK Creations! J is married to K, who's the hubby's best bud since secondary school. We met at one of their
many gatherings and didn't bond right away. After all, the only thing we had in common was that our husbands were friends. But we soon bonded over planning for our weddings (we both got married in the same year) and our love for kids. She's another one of my friends whose passion is to be a
Stepford Wife.
Here at the
University of Motherhood, I'm proud to present J's
debut feature:
Chocolate Mint Cookies
Found my very first recipe book (which was also my secondary school Home Economics recipe book) from my mum's place and decided to do some baking at home.
Since I already got most of the ingredients at home, I decided to make cookies using the simplest method - The "
Rubbing-In" method.
As I did not have any chocolate chips at home, I improvised using the chocolate mint sticks, which I cut into small pieces as shown:
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| Cutting up the chocolate mint sticks |
Next, add 50g of butter into 150g of plain flour.
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| After adding the butter, cut it into smaller pieces in the flour. |
After it's cut into smaller pieces, you can start rubbing the butter into the flour.
(
Tip: Ensure that your nails are trimmed. Definitely not advisible for ladies with nicely manicured nails.)
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| Rub the butter into the flour |
As you're rubbing the butter into the flour, remember to raise your hand up high to"incorporate air" into the mixture.
You should also rub the mixture until it resembles breadcrumbs.
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| Mixture resembling bread crumbs |
It should look a bit like yellowish milk powder. You will see the difference in colour when you're doing it (my camera is not good enough to capture the change in colour).
Next, add the chocolate mint chips (which you've just cut) and about 75-100g of sugar into the mixture (I usually use my own estimation).
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| Add the chocolate mint and sugar into the mixture |
*
Tip: You may replace the chocolate mint with other ingredients according to the flavour you would like your cookies to be. If you decide to use savoury ingredients such as peanuts or pistachio, be sure to add some salt to taste
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| Mix the mixture well |
Next, after making a well in the centre of the mixture, add some eggs and milk so that it becomes a dough.
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| Add eggs that have been beaten |
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| Add some milk |
Eggs and milk should be added bit by bit while kneading the mixture into a dough with your hand. Doing this will ensure that you know when to stop as the the dough should not be too dry or too wet.
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| "Bread crumbs" + egg + milk = dough |
Next, roll the dough into little balls of roughly the same size (about the size of a fishball). You can get your kids and/or hubby to help you as this is fun :)
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| Roll up the dough into individual "fishballs" |
You may shape the cookies with a cookie cutter if you have one at home. As I do not have a cookie cutter, I flattened the ball-like dough with a fork instead.
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| Flatten the 'balls' using a fork |
Finally, bake the flattened dough in a preheat oven at 180 degree celcius for about 20 minutes.
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| Bake cookies in the oven for 20 minutes |
You should be able to smell the scent of cookies after 20 minutes. Be careful not to burn your cookies. You should be watching your oven and not be leaving it unattended for too long.
After 20 minutes of baking in the oven, the end product should look like this:
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| Freshly baked cookies straight out of the oven! |
We decided to give some of the cookies to our neighbours as they have often bought egg tarts for us. It's time we returned the love with something, hehe..
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| Home-baked chocolate mint cookies |
Our neighbours gave us very good feedback on them (although I personally found them a bit dry).
You can definitely add more butter than I did and see if it will turn out well. I later made more batches cookies in the pistachio and sunflower seeds flavour using the same method (as described above). You should try it!
Happy Baking! ^^
