Time To Bake!

Minsan kailangan mo talaga ng creative break from work!! Watercolor painting, painting on canvas, rubber stamping, and other ways to de-stress are a must from time to time. For this past weekend, I decided to take on a childhood hobby.. baking! Growing up, my sister Aissa and I loved to bake cookies, brownies, muffins, and even cakes, from different recipe books we saw at home.

I looked up a lot of oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipies from the net and chose this from the Betty Crocker website, but did a few adjustments on my own! It turned out well so I'm sharing the recipe and step by step process with you! To first time bakers reading this, baking is really easy because everything is calculated!
 

First, fire up your oven to 350°F, or 176°C. This is just to pre-heat.

Then mixed the dry ingredients together: 2 cups quick-cooking oats (that's different from instant!), 1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1 1/4 cup of chocolate chips (I prefer the semi-sweet kind). Set that aside.

In a separate bowl will be your wet ingredients. Mix together 1 cup softened butter and 1 1/2 cup brown sugar. Remember, softened butter doesn't mean stick it in a microwave to make it melt! That changes the consistency of the butter. Just leave out out the refrigerator for a bit to make it soften.

Then mix in 1 egg and 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla.

Make sure to mix only in one direction. You'll know the batter is smooth enough when the sugar and butter have no chunks left.

Mix together the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients. I like putting it in portion by portion so that it is easier to mix. When batter starts to get thick, use the folding technique instead. That's using the spoon to scoop from below and "fold" on top, repeatedly and circling the bowl. Set aside.

I like greasing the pan so that the cookies don't stick to them after. Remember the stick of butter earlier? So the easiest way to grease the pan is just to save the wrapper of the stick of butter and rub the inside on the pan itself. Keeps your hands clean too!

Get a tablespoon's worth of the batter, roll into a ball, and place on the pan two inches away from each other.

Stick in the oven and set the timer to 12 minutes.

Make sure you check on your cookies at around the 8 minute mark. Sometimes, at the 9th or 10th minute, you'll see the edges of the cookies start to brown. When that happens, you need not wait for the 12 minutes to finish. Important tip too! Stop opening the oven to "check" on what you are baking! When cool air from the outside enters the oven, that also affects baking time.

Cooling the cookies are just as important as baking! No need for a cooling tray, just use your wooden table trays (for hot dishes) and set your baking pan there. Don't try to lift the cookies right away because they may crumble when fresh out of the oven. Make them cool for a bit first.

When done cooling, tadaaaaa! Time to eat! It's a very simple recipe perfect for first time bakers! I hope you try it out, and I hope you like it. If you do try it out, let me know what you think of the recipe!

xoxo