Though I’ve always had a sweet tooth, baking for me happened by chance … it was a dark and gloomy day in London (where I was based at the time) and felt like the perfect time to indulge in some chocolate cake. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) stepping out at the time was not an option due to bad weather. Therefore, my only hope was to bake one myself! I had luckily purchased a Betty Crocker cake mix a few days ago, and that’s exactly what I relied on for my first ever bake! It was a great confidence boost to start out with, and kept the interest going until I finally decided to start baking from scratch.

A few years and countless number of trial and error baking experiments later, things started to look more promising and so did the “pretty please” requests from my friends to bake them something scrumptious! I did not hesitate to do that either though as one way of looking skinny was to make them fat … haha, just kidding!

So the latest recipe that I tried which turned out quite nice were these Nutty Chocolate Chip cookies. I found the original recipe on Allrecipes.com but tweaked it a little to suit my own taste. The exact recipe I used has been re-written and explained in my own way below.

Serving: Makes approximately 12 cookies

Ingredients:
All Purpose Flour: 1 cup + 2 tsp
Baking Soda: 1/2 tsp
Brown Sugar (packed): 1/3 cup
Caster Sugar (packed): 1/3 cup
Unsalted Butter (at room temperature): 113 grams or 1/2 cup
Egg: 1
Almond Essence: 1 tsp
Semi-sweet chocolate chips: 1/2 cup
Assorted mixed nuts: 1/2 cup

Method:
Pre-heat your oven at 180 degrees Celsius. Line your baking tray with parchment paper. Set aside.
In a bowl, whisk together the unsalted butter, brown sugar and caster sugar until creamy. Add the egg followed by almond essence. Whisk again.
In another bowl, sift and add the all purpose flour, baking soda, chocolate chips and assorted nuts. Mix with the help of a spoon.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, and give the mixture one final whisk until all the ingredients are well-combined.
Scoop out equal sized cookies on your baking tray with the help of a cookie scoop or teaspoon. Remember to leave some space between the cookies as they will spread while baking.
Bake the cookies in your pre-heated oven at 180 degrees Celsius, for approximately 10 minutes or until the edges are a slight golden brown. Remember not to over-bake as the cookies harden further during the cooling process.
Transfer the cookies to your cooling rack immediately and allow the cookies to cool completely before serving.