Food Blogging For Idiots

What can I say? I made biscuits again. Cookies. Shortbread. Ach, you know what I mean. I'm just thankful that up to now they've all stored well, because potentially they could be trouble makers in the old fat department.  

I have to admit I'm really enjoying this baking lark. It's like messing around with Play-Doh that you can eat. That you're supposed to eat, I mean. (Because really, who hasn't fallen for that vanilla-y goodness at one point or other in their childhood?) All this mixing and blending and rolling and kneading and actually, it's even better than Play-Doh, because I don't know about you, but I think I must have had a non-food version of brumotactillophobia (a fear of different foods touching on your plate) when it came to the different colours touching one another in play. There's probably a proper name for that, but I'm damned if I can find it. There's an answer for everything online, but you have to ask the right question first...

Now, though, everything gets mixed up together, and depending on what it's going to be, gets rolled out, or squished, or prodded or shoved into baking tins. I suspect all I've actually done here is confirm the fact that I'm just a big kid.

But today I'm going to pretend I'm one of those fancy food bloggers, because me and my little Samsung Galaxy S2 phone camera (yes, it's 2015, yes the S6 has been out for a while, but you know what? Take a look at my work space (which comprises of the lid of a table-top gas cooker, and my sink drainer) and baking tools (ranging from ancient, to second-hand, to cheap but cheerful), and you'll realise that getting the most modern phone with the zippiest tech is not the first thing on my list of life upgrades) me and my phone camera are going to pretend we're in the kitchen of Nigella or Ina, and it's really a fancy DSLR!

But first, I have to tell you what we're making! I'm failing in my duties as a food blogger already.
Tsk.

We're making Double Dark Chocolate Shortbread Cookies. Oh yes.

You need: 

120 grams of softened, unsalted butter

30 grams of icing sugar

30 grams of dark cocoa powder

1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

100 grams of (gluten-free) all-purpose flour

90 grams of dark chocolate chips  (I *may* have added a bit more, because chocolate)

Reading the recipe, the first instruction was to wang the oven on to 160C, but reading further, you had to refrigerate the dough for at least an hour. Uh-uh. My leccy bill ain't having any of your wasteful habits, madame authoress. None of them. My tiny little oven doesn't need such a grand introduction to the medium heat of 160 degrees Celsius.

So instead I went ahead and creamed the butter, cocoa powder and icing sugar together to get a smooth paste, then added the vanilla, following that with the flour, and finally the chocolate chips.

 Turning it on to a board (read: lid of the cooker) I prepared it to be rolled into a 'smooth 8" log'.

:: snerk ::  I am a child.

I added a little cocoa powder to the baking paper, just to be on the safe side, then wrapped the log, twisted the ends, rolled it out, and put it in the fridge for an hour.

Yes, that's Markie's cocoa powder. The cheapest per gram, if you can believe that, that I can find here. Seems ridiculous, and although I must admit to not knowing the contents of every shop in town as of yet, as baking supplies go, this country seems woefully behind the times.

Remembering to put the oven on (well done me :: pats back::) I brought out the log, and chopped it up into roughly 20 pieces. The advice is to use a sharp knife. I'd add to that and say watch out for the cold and solid choc chips, because no matter how sharp your knife is, it's going to deflect off a choc chip or four and do unspeakable things to the uniformity of the shortbread cookies. Just sayin'.

As you can see, I was left with one small piece, one extra small piece that would have ruined the beautiful layout of my two trays of cookies. It was tragic, but it had to go.

Go in my mouth.  

The recipe suggested a baking time of twelve to fifteen minutes, and I went for thirteen, because I could. The next time I'll go for a couple less; my tiny wee oven likes to be good at what it does occasionally, and the shortbread don't seem to be greedy when it comes to time and heat demands.

I remembered just in time not to attempt to remove them from the baking sheet when they came out of the oven - flashbacks to my Mum making shortbread at home, and always leaving them in the tray to 'set' and cool a little before attempting to put them on the racks.

And these babies are so melt-in-the-mouth it's not true! They're light and chocolatey and ridiculously moreish, and I was hard-pressed to stop at sampling one. Okay. Two. They're really good, even though I say so myself. I think a couple of minutes less both of the initial mixing, and in the oven, might have made them a little less crumbly, but on the whole the recipe does what it sets out to do - give you a pile of delicious, double dark chocolate shortbread cookies.