Now Perfected.

Photo mat by Ria Nirwana

The chewy chocolate chips cookies recipe was perfected! Alhamdulillah..
It uses bread flour to produce to chewy texture, but it tends to dry quickly after a few days. So the best way is to bake fresh, to finish in like 2 days. You can stock the dough in the fridge and bake fresh each time.

Secrets:

• Bread flour
• Store dough in the fridge for at least 4 hours or overnight
• Good vanilla
• Do not omit the salt
• Use real butter, not margarine, not butter substitute, not butter blend, not recombined butter
• Use real chocolate chips. The one with cocoa butter. Not palm compound.

I hope you like it like I do. Trust me, it's perfect :)

Ka'ak. Nigella sativa Cookies.

Dalam Ash-Shohihain diriwayatkan hadist dari Ummu Salamah dari Abu Hurairah R.A, bahwa Rasulullah SAW bersabda:  

“Hendaklah kalian mengkonsumsi Habbatus Sauda’, karena didalamnya terdapat kesembuhan dari setiap penyakit, kecuali saam. Sedangkan saam artinya kematian.”  

Imam Bukhori juga meriwayatkan hadist dari Aisyah R.A bahwasanya ia mendengar Nabi SAW bersabda; ”Sesungguhnya Habbatus Sauda’ ini merupakan obat bagi setiap penyakit, kecuali saam. Aku bertanya, “Apakah saam itu?” Beliau menjawab, “Kematian.” 

Dalam riwayat Muslim: “Tidak ada suatu penyakit, kecuali penyembuhannya ada didalam Habbatus Sauda.”

So happy this morning, finding out Photoscape X was just released. Alhamdulillah. :*

These are middle-eastern cookies called Ka'ak, made by Nadrah Shahab. It has habatussauda (Nigella sativa), cardamom, spikuk spices (mix spices), and canarium nuts. If I was to make it, in syaa Allah, I will add cinnamon and a dash of nutmeg and omit spikuk spices. Just a personal preference.

I love that habatussauda brings heat and intensity, and loads of health benefit, which beautifully characterized the rather sweet and crumbly cookies. The specks of black seeds here and there created pretty sight, too.

PennyLane Chocolate Fudge Cookies

The first post of this cookie was back in 2008. I have nothing to say except that I never bake chocolate cookies any other way anymore. Crackly outside, fudgy inside. Strong chocolate, vanilla, coffee. Lavished with almond and canarium nuts. A keeper ever-since.

I sell these on mood basis :). Masya Allah, the whole batch was usually sold out even when they're still in the oven. I never escalated the price per piece since 2008 and one of my customers now already suggested me to do so. Masya Allah, it is THAT good :)

I hope the recipe can benefit you too, and if it puts a smile on your face, my smile will be wider than yours :)

Repost: Wholewheat Snickerdoodles

This very morning the crave for a good cinnamony biscuit hit hard and I remember this wonderful cookies I made back in 2009. Decided to repost because I think eventually I will have to move most of my posts in my archive blog here, just for practical reason. So here is my first repost. 

Expect to see other reposts soon :D

Sweet Perfection

Versi Manis

Jadi, begini.

Banyak orang mencari resep chocolate chips cookies yang sempurna seperti yang dibuat Pepperidge Farm, Mrs. Fields, St. Michael, Famous Amos, atau mungkin kafe mungil di pedesaan Liverpool atau Tuscany. Termasuk saya. Terutama jenis soft baked: berukuran besar, dipanggang setengah matang, empuk agak liat (chewy), berjibun isi, aroma butter dan vanilla, keping cokelat premium, dan.. keriput yang sempurna!

Sepertinya hanya di dunia arkeologi dan kuliner keriput dimaknai sedemikian tinggi :)

Pengembaraan dari resep ke resep, trial demi trial, membawa saya kepada satu kesimpulan. Chocolate Chips Cookies yang sempurna itu mensyaratkan penggunaan banyak bahan yang tidak ingin saya konsumsi. Bahan-bahan non-halal, trans fat, gula berlebihan, penguat rasa, pewarna, pengembang dan pengemulsi. Hampir mustahil bisa dibuat di dapur rumahan dengan pemakaian bahan artificial dan trans fat seminim mungkin.

Meski tabah dan ikhlas menerima kenyataan ini, ada 2 resep yang cukup menawan hati, paling mirip dengan gambaran kukis sempurna. Resep milik Nigella yang sudah saya post di sini, dan resep milik Ashley, salah satu foodblogger favorite saya yang pasti akan segera jadi favorite anda juga.  Kedua resep ini mirip-mirip saja, namun entah kenapa resep Ashley menghasilkan tekstur dan keriput yang lebih cantik. Atau mungkin hanya perasaan saya saja menjelang bulan purnama *eh*.

What's Left..

You'd think a plain cookie with a few chocolate chips folded into the mixture would be a simple matter. It's not. It's never difficult to make, just difficult to get right. 

~ Nigella Lawson

These were what I was left with. Three cookies. No more, no less. And even those were already booked by a friend. So basically, I got nothing left. Really. Well, I guess that just sums up how good they really were.

My Up and Coming Hero!

This is the wholewheat chocolate chips cookies I ranted about in the last post. Made it several times by now,  I keep craving for more. I tweaked the recipe to my liking and got me my best fool-proof version of comfort cookies. It is that good I am proud enough to include in my next Idul Fitri selection cookies to sell. It will be my up and coming hero!

Bangket Susu

That milky floury super crumbly melt-in-your-mouth sensation which had been around through generations. In other words, yet another Bangket :)

Yea, yea, another little known fact that Bangket takes control of me like a charm. For this coming idul fitri, I have nothing in mind but bangket after bangket. I planned to bake Bangket Susu, Bangket Kacang and Bangket Jahe --which by the way, I have found the best recipe of--, but turned out only accomplished the first two. And finished them all even before idul fitri. Couldn't help it!

This is the famous Bangket Susu by Nadrah Shahab. Other than the already famous virtues of bangket, this one particularly boasts the milky aroma that surprisingly goes really well with the distinctive character of savor of sago flour. Two years ago, Natural Cooking Club took the community by the storm with its Bangket Week, where the members deliriously baked nothing but bangket to respect and honor this traditional cookies of Indonesia. I've had it a year before when Nadrah sent me one jar, along with a jar of Bangket Kacang. So when the Bangket Week was on, the two bangkets were stars in a matter of seconds.

The original recipe uses margarine which I initially planned to substitute with butter. I was run out of butter, so I used oil instead and it produced different texture than those made of butter or margarine. When the oil mixed with flour, it created lumps that later when baked turned to be these wonderful crunchy things inside the crumbly cookies, things the original one doesn't have. On the exterior, they created beautiful cracks adorning each cookie beautiful like pretty laces. Oh, how lovely little nibble!