The Making of a Heartfelt Gift

I love giving things to people, but most of the time, those things are a bit edible. Because I bake, and stuff, so...yeah. So it was my friend Claire's (who is a phenomenal woman of God, just saying...) birthday...and I couldn't think what to give her. Another friend and I are clubbing together to get her this CD she really wants, but I wanted to do a little extra.

So I decided to make her cookies.

Because everyone love chocolate chip cookies. Psh. Not even an option not to.

I used this recipe I found online...looong ago, I can't remember where, but if I find it, I'll so link you. The cookies are like. Wow. And then some.

So, first, there was the messing around with the eggs (because it's not my fault there was a sharpie in the kitchen. So not my fault.).

This is Egg1 and Egg2. Egg1 wasn't formed quite properly, and something went wrong...not Egg1 is slightly...different. Egg2 is just a sour-puss.

But then! They were magicked away from the eggtray and put into a biiiig plastic bowl. They weren't sure what was happening, but Egg1 just wanted to have fun.

Until the magic came back...

Then, shortly after Egg1 disappeared from Egg2's view, Egg1 was returned...but IT WAS A MERE SHELL OF WHAT EGG1 HAD BEEN BEFORE!!!

Shock-horror.

Also, this was chocolate that had been sitting in my cupboard for a few weeks now, and because I wasn't eating it, I chucked it in the recipe. I give you permission to do the same with any excess choc in your hoard.

The recipe:

Ingredients  250 grams unsalted butter at room temperature   1 cup granulated sugar   1 cup brown sugar [ I just used 2 cups of brown sugar here]  2 eggs  1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract [because I love vanilla, I made it 2 tsp]  1 tablespoon freshly squeezed juice from an orange [might have upped the dosage on this one too...]  2 cups cake flour  1 cup bread flour  1 teaspoon salt  1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda  1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon   100% cocoa bar, chopped fine   70% cocoa bar, roughly chopped   60% cocoa bar, roughly chopped [together, the chocolate has to be about 1 1/2 cups full]  Pecans (1 heaping cup whole), roughly chopped  Walnuts (1 really heaping cup whole), roughly chopped  1 1/2 teaspoons zest from an orange

Instructions  1. Preheat a conventional oven to 170C.  2. Cream the room-temp butter and sugars together in a bowl.  The      mixture should be light and fluffy.  3. Add each egg one at a time, mixing well after adding.  4. Add the vanilla and juice from an orange. Mix well.  5. Add the flours, salt, baking soda and cinnamon to the     bowl and mix until the batter comes together.  6. Before adding the extras, mix the nuts, chocolate and zest well     in a bowl. This ensures the orange zest is even distributed.  7. Add the extras (nuts, chocolate, zest) to the batter and mix     in until it is evenly distributed.    8. Place tablespoon sized blobs of cookie dough on to a baking     sheet lined with baking paper.  9. Bake for 10 to 11 minutes until the cookie is golden.

The dough:

The result:

Now, the cookies were done. What to do, oh how to package? It's cheap handing over a tupperware and then asking for it later...oh! I think I have a cake box still... [yes, I'm a loser and I buy cake/cupcake boxes].

This is the part where you draw things on a plain white box in hopes that you can make it look less...plain.

And this was the end result. I promise this won't turn into a baking blog, because that would be boring.