Now, Sitting quietly is not a virtue I am blessed with. And to be frank, given a chance, I'd happily boast about my fidgety nature, although it does get me into trouble from time to time.
I heard this line somewhere very recently. It goes like "Nature tinkers. It isn't an engineer." So, today was a day to tinker, a day with nature.
Baking cakes is something I was familiar with. I was also no stranger to eating the whole cake by myself after baking it, quite literally. But somehow, cookies were an elusive culinary creation. In spite of containing the same ingredients of a cake, these things taste a lot different. That said, get the dough composition sufficiently wrong, and the cookie starts tasting like a squidgy cake, or the supposed cake becomes a 'tough cookie'....
A dozen recipes can be found on the Internet for baking the 'Perfect' cookie. But this was to be an adventure. Maybe not through a completely unbeaten path, as some bloke/lady, a long time ago, had already invented the cookie, but one can always deviate from the suggested path. A bit less of this, a bit more of that wouldn't turn the supposed-to-be-cookie into a fire-breathing dragon. Putting faith into this thought, I was on!
Another thing worth mentioning, before jumping into the whole Kitchen-scene is that, to start something new, right from scratch, one needs a very uninhibited and encouraging atmosphere. More on this, a bit later. For now, let's get baking!
I wouldn't bother with the exact composition of the recipe, as any Tom, Dick or Harry could tell you that.
Step one was to combine butter with sugar. The food processor was not working, so powdering sugar was out of question. So, IDEA!
I took the butter, melted all of it on a pan, added all the sugar and gave the whole thing a good stir. Although using heat to mix the whole thing faster isn't exactly rocket-science, one seems to feel extra-happy after pulling off anything properly for the first time, I guess.
After that came the eggs. To the butter-sugar mixture,transferred into a big bowl, I broke the eggs right in, and gave it all a nice 'beating' with a whisk. So that got sorted. By the way, almost forgot, these weren't normal run-of-the-mill plain flour/white flour/Maida cookies. These were Oatmeal ones...
So to the egg-butter-sugar mixture, I added about a cup and a half of wheat flour, and two and a half cup rolled oats, adding each one slowly. And there I was, with a sticky batter.
Throughout the process, one thought stayed with me. "What if the whole plan wen KAPUT??" All the flour, butter, sugar eggs and all going down the drain was a nasty thought in the back of my head. Both mom and my sister had got a whiff of my apprehensions. Okay, I actually told them what I was afraid of. So here's my little sister, all mature and understanding, saying something like "Chill! Only when you get it wrong will you know how to get it right the next time!" Following that, just a while later, it was my mom saying "It's credible enough that you are trying something by yourself, so chill..."
I was like "Hmmm..... Nice!"
And then, the batter was done.
I'd heard people eating cookie dough, and liking the taste of it. So I ate a bit of what I thought I had made was cookie dough. It tasted fine. Pretty good, as a matter of fact. But what if my taste buds were deceiving me?? I had to put the dough to the test! I needed a guinea-pig!!(My sister will SO surely kill me for this!!)
She survived the experiment.. Turns out I wasn't the only one being deceived by taste buds...
Moving on....
By the way, here's where I'd like to mention the encouraging atmosphere that is most the most critical ingredient in the making of anything. My sister and I happen to have the fortune of being born to parents who have gladly allowed us a very wide margin for error. Failure has never been a big deal, although never encouraged, but is never looked upon as anything other than a stepping stone. So, it is ingrained in us that the worst thing that can happen is a small delay in reaching the destination. Given this kind of an upbringing, it just gives one a bit of room to be adventurous. And although what I seem to be doing here doesn't resemble SPELUNKING, it certainly looks possible.
Onto the baking tray! For one thing, cookie dough surely is one hell of a sticky, messy thing to handle. Use one spoon to scoop the dough, another one to remove the dough from the first spoon, and then use the first spoon to take the dough off the second spoon.... Yeah, doing it was more confusing.
With the greased aluminum tray ready, the oven all pre-heated, it was time to plonk the blobs of dough onto the tray, and into the oven. And then, there was this.......
Then this......
And then, out came the first batch....
I could hear the non-existing audience applauding when I saw these. Had I been sentimental enough, I would have felt tears rolling down my cheeks, or something like that. Instead, I just picked one of these and popped it into my mouth. "Hmm.. Not bad... They could have done a bit better, sitting inside foe another 5 minutes", I though.
Somehow, another two batches rolled out, each, for some reason, seeming a bit better than the previous one. That must be something to do with some weird aspect of psychology, or....that I was actually getting better at it.
Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I remembered something stupid I had done during the day, which I hadn't noticed up till then.
I have this friend flying in from the Middle-East. So I sent her a message saying something like "Jumping across the Arabian Sea tomorrow, right?" Just that instead of typing 'Arabian Sea', I had typed Arabian Ocean....... Brilliant! There HAS to be something ABSOLUTELY UNNECESSARY that I manage to do somehow!
Apart from that, I felt everything else had fallen into place as planned. At the end of it all, I managed to pull off something that looked like this...
Even my dad approved these. Mom gave him one piece from the first batch, saying "Your son's making plans to kill us all. I ate one. Looks like he got the recipe wrong. Here, your turn to try...". His first remark? "This thing tastes like mud.."
Then.....mom gave him a piece of....the third batch of cookies, not a piece of her mind, thankfully.
And then he asked for another one, and happily ate it.
If there was something that sprang up in my head, strangely enough, it was this
All in all, it's just another cookie in my mouth....
I heard this line somewhere very recently. It goes like "Nature tinkers. It isn't an engineer." So, today was a day to tinker, a day with nature.
Baking cakes is something I was familiar with. I was also no stranger to eating the whole cake by myself after baking it, quite literally. But somehow, cookies were an elusive culinary creation. In spite of containing the same ingredients of a cake, these things taste a lot different. That said, get the dough composition sufficiently wrong, and the cookie starts tasting like a squidgy cake, or the supposed cake becomes a 'tough cookie'....
A dozen recipes can be found on the Internet for baking the 'Perfect' cookie. But this was to be an adventure. Maybe not through a completely unbeaten path, as some bloke/lady, a long time ago, had already invented the cookie, but one can always deviate from the suggested path. A bit less of this, a bit more of that wouldn't turn the supposed-to-be-cookie into a fire-breathing dragon. Putting faith into this thought, I was on!
Another thing worth mentioning, before jumping into the whole Kitchen-scene is that, to start something new, right from scratch, one needs a very uninhibited and encouraging atmosphere. More on this, a bit later. For now, let's get baking!
I wouldn't bother with the exact composition of the recipe, as any Tom, Dick or Harry could tell you that.
Step one was to combine butter with sugar. The food processor was not working, so powdering sugar was out of question. So, IDEA!
I took the butter, melted all of it on a pan, added all the sugar and gave the whole thing a good stir. Although using heat to mix the whole thing faster isn't exactly rocket-science, one seems to feel extra-happy after pulling off anything properly for the first time, I guess.
After that came the eggs. To the butter-sugar mixture,transferred into a big bowl, I broke the eggs right in, and gave it all a nice 'beating' with a whisk. So that got sorted. By the way, almost forgot, these weren't normal run-of-the-mill plain flour/white flour/Maida cookies. These were Oatmeal ones...
So to the egg-butter-sugar mixture, I added about a cup and a half of wheat flour, and two and a half cup rolled oats, adding each one slowly. And there I was, with a sticky batter.
Throughout the process, one thought stayed with me. "What if the whole plan wen KAPUT??" All the flour, butter, sugar eggs and all going down the drain was a nasty thought in the back of my head. Both mom and my sister had got a whiff of my apprehensions. Okay, I actually told them what I was afraid of. So here's my little sister, all mature and understanding, saying something like "Chill! Only when you get it wrong will you know how to get it right the next time!" Following that, just a while later, it was my mom saying "It's credible enough that you are trying something by yourself, so chill..."
I was like "Hmmm..... Nice!"
And then, the batter was done.
I'd heard people eating cookie dough, and liking the taste of it. So I ate a bit of what I thought I had made was cookie dough. It tasted fine. Pretty good, as a matter of fact. But what if my taste buds were deceiving me?? I had to put the dough to the test! I needed a guinea-pig!!(My sister will SO surely kill me for this!!)
Moving on....
By the way, here's where I'd like to mention the encouraging atmosphere that is most the most critical ingredient in the making of anything. My sister and I happen to have the fortune of being born to parents who have gladly allowed us a very wide margin for error. Failure has never been a big deal, although never encouraged, but is never looked upon as anything other than a stepping stone. So, it is ingrained in us that the worst thing that can happen is a small delay in reaching the destination. Given this kind of an upbringing, it just gives one a bit of room to be adventurous. And although what I seem to be doing here doesn't resemble SPELUNKING, it certainly looks possible.
Onto the baking tray! For one thing, cookie dough surely is one hell of a sticky, messy thing to handle. Use one spoon to scoop the dough, another one to remove the dough from the first spoon, and then use the first spoon to take the dough off the second spoon.... Yeah, doing it was more confusing.
With the greased aluminum tray ready, the oven all pre-heated, it was time to plonk the blobs of dough onto the tray, and into the oven. And then, there was this.......
 |
| Waiting |
 |
| Peeping out of impatience...... |
Somehow, another two batches rolled out, each, for some reason, seeming a bit better than the previous one. That must be something to do with some weird aspect of psychology, or....that I was actually getting better at it.
Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I remembered something stupid I had done during the day, which I hadn't noticed up till then.
I have this friend flying in from the Middle-East. So I sent her a message saying something like "Jumping across the Arabian Sea tomorrow, right?" Just that instead of typing 'Arabian Sea', I had typed Arabian Ocean....... Brilliant! There HAS to be something ABSOLUTELY UNNECESSARY that I manage to do somehow!
Apart from that, I felt everything else had fallen into place as planned. At the end of it all, I managed to pull off something that looked like this...
Then.....mom gave him a piece of....the third batch of cookies, not a piece of her mind, thankfully.
And then he asked for another one, and happily ate it.
If there was something that sprang up in my head, strangely enough, it was this
All in all, it's just another cookie in my mouth....
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