When you are a housewife and you have just one interesting channel to watch on TV and that channel shows Masterchef (US, Australia, Junior) thrice a day, you have to get inspired to cook. And not just cook, cook the exotic stuff and feel good about it. After the Vietnamese Pho's disaster and Chicken Snitzel's "save my reputation" performance, I really got motivated to bake. Baking sounds so sophisticated and technique driven that the idea of baking made me feel chef like from inside and I thought of trying my hands on the chocolate chip cookies. The first question is why cookies- well because they sounded easy and quick. And why chocolate chip cookies, that's because almost everyone (including my husband) likes them. I got a decent recipe and the ingredients from our own mustafa. If anyone of you have seen Masterchef, they always talk about being absolutely right in measurements and technique. So before really starting to mix the ingredients, I did my research on:
- 1 cup measurement - its actually 16 tablespoons
- Tablespoon is different than teaspoon
- How to preheat an oven - yeah, it was my first time with oven as well and my oven doesn't have a pre-heat alarm
- Difference between whisking and beating
- Difference between baking soda and baking powder etc.
To cut it short, the preparation was fine and upto the expectations. But even after doing all the research on measurements, I got it wrong at the time of placing the rolls on baking sheet and the result was huge cookies. On second thoughts, I think they looked like pregnant cookies. You know the base was normal size but they bloated towards the top. And to add to the disaster, they got burned from the bottom - really burned (I wanted to say overcooked instead of burned but that would have been an understatement of the condition) - you will need a hammer to break that. But on the positive side, the taste was decent. That's why I am calling it a pseudo disaster :)
Anyhoo, when my husband saw my effort, he said, they look like boiled potatoes. Yeah right, he normally doesn't say nice things just to please me. He gives an honest feedback - so my cookies looked like pregnant boiled potatoes but they tasted good.
Moral of story is: We all should try new things, it gives new experiences and memories and more importantly a shuffle to our gray cells. I not only got the experience but also a post out of the baking saga.
