Personally speaking, I have never liked-and will never like-weird assed cookies with the almond bits or the jam drop cookies that get stuck between the teeth. I love simple,plain cookies where you can actually taste and smell the ingredients. I hate, detest and I am mortified by chocolate cookies that taste nothing of chocolate. What is the point of it? Really?
I guess buying cookies at a good bakery is the second best thing to making it at home. On the other hand, supermarket, store bought cookies not only have a billion units of preservatives in them but they are also MASS PRODUCED. There is no element of uniqueness and individuality in supermarket, store bought cookies. They are all of the same size, the same weight, with the same amount of hydrogenated oils, trans-fats and god forbid - chemicals.
Making your own cookies doesn't really require that much of an effort and the end result is worth the 3 minutes it takes to mix all the ingredients. Besides, serving guests home make cookies gives one a pride that cannot compare to opening a packet of store bought cookies, placing them on a plate and serving them.
The thing about baking, that one should always keep in mind, is that it is a science. If you measure out the ingredients and follow the process, you cannot go wrong.
Having said that, I have made mistakes often but with practice comes perfection. Or so the saying goes.
In a bowl, mix 1/2 cup of caster sugar, 50 grams of softened butter, 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract, and one egg. In another bowl, sift in 1.5 cups of plain four, 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder and a small pinch of salt. Now, mix the dry ingredients with the wet mixture till well incorporated. Wet your hands a bit (so that your hands don't stick to the dough) and form the mixture into a flattened ball. The dough should look somewhat like the one in the picture below.
Place this dough on plastic wrap, cover and refrigerate for an hour. The reason why we refrigerate the dough is because we want to allow the butter to harden up once again so that rolling out the dough into minute thickness will not pose a problem.
After an hour, take the dough out of the fridge and place it, unwrapped, on top of a well floured area. Make sure that your rolling pin is also well floured. Now, using minimal pressure, roll the dough out into a thickness of less than 1/4 centimetre and cut shapes using a cookie cutter or the top of a glass.
(This is where I went wrong. I had forgotten to preheat the oven (to 180 C) and by the time the oven had heated up, the butter in the cookies had softened and I couldn't preserve the shape of my cookie. But whatever, it supposed to look homey. As long it tastes nice, it should be alright.).
Place the cut cookies onto a greased, baking sheet and bake in the oven at 180C for 10-13 minutes or until the edges of all the cookies (not just one or two) start to brown.
Remove the baked cookies from the oven and cool on top of a cooling tray. Enjoy once they are completely cooled.
Ginger Glaze (Optional)
The cookies by themselves are great. But a drizzle of any glaze would definitely give them a different character all together. If you don't like ginger, you could use some lemon juice here or even substitute the ginger for a teaspoon of plain vanilla extract.
Here's the recipe for the Ginger Glaze:
To 2 tablespoon of hot milk, add about 1 inch of grated ginger and stir it so that the ginger goodness seeps into the milk. If the milk curdles at this point, don't freak out. Seriously. Its NOT the END OF THE WORLD (That lil thing will happen on December 21st, 2012. Freak out THEN). Strain (through a sieve to catch the ginger bits) in a separate bowl and add about 1/2 cup of castor sugar or till it resembles the consistency in the picture below.
Use this glaze over half the cookies (some people -Yes MOM, I mean you!!!- prefer the taste of the buttery cookie to the ginger glazed cookies. So, if you are in a giving mood, keep some cookies Glaze Free) and DON'T TOUCH for atleast 15 minutes till the glaze hardens.
Well, there you have it! Enjoy!
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