Perfection is overvalued

I found the perfect cookie recipe at Annie's eats.  I used Nattuchakkarai or the south Indian organic brown sugar and repeated her recipe with very little changes here.  Result?  Perfection!  I dare say, even Annie might agree, nattuchakkarai takes her excellent recipe up a notch with its fudgy gooeyness.  Also it has some chunkier bits amidst the powdery stuff and the chunky stuff hangs on to its shape stubbornly through mixing, even with a hand mixer and baking, finally giving up the ghost when you bite into the cookie. Delicious.  And to top it all, I made it with chapathi flour (whole wheat) not maida.
I used a combination of ghee (i had forgotten to switch off the gas when I was melting ghee for my son's breakfast and ended up browning it up a tad too much) and melted butter.  The butter ghee mix was truly at room temperature and I did not have any issues with the dough some of the other commentators had talked about.
I felt the size of the dough recommended per cookie was huge, I took a tablespoon of the cookie dough, broke it into two and bakes the individual halves cut side up.  Also the chocolate chip to other ingredients ratio is way too high.  Awesome, but high.  If you believe in moderation you must cut it down to one cup.

  1. 2 cup flour, all purpose or whole wheat
  2. 1/2 tsp baking soda
  3. 1/2 tsp salt
  4. 1 cup organic nattuchakkarai
  5. 1/2 cup palm sugar
  6. 12 tbspoon butter + ghee in equal quantities, melt the butter, ghee can be used as it is
  7. 1 tsp vanilla extract
  8. 1 egg + 1 yolk
  9. 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips (a lot!)
  • Preheat oven to 325 deg C, butter a cookie sheet
  • Combine the dry items (1-3) until well blended
  • Beat together the sugars and butter until soft and creamy, add extract, egg and yolk and beat together until well blended
  • Add dry items and beat until well combined
  • Fold in the chocolate chips
  • Take 1 tbspoon dough, divide into two and place on cookie sheet, cut side up.  bake for 11 minutes
  • Take out of oven and when cool enough to handle transfer to wire rack to cool completely.  Cookie hardens on cooling, deceptively soft when taking out of oven.
  • Makes about 4 dozen cookies at this size!
one cookie sheets worth cookie

I kept the cookie misshapen to give crisper edges, worked, but won't win any beauty contest.

The problem with perfection? My son will have NO OTHER COOKIE!  I am sentenced to a lifetime of making this cookie and the chocolate yogurt cake (works just as well in muffin form) for the next few months or years, depending on how soon his tastes change, if I wish to kowtow to his likes!  I go from enjoying trying out new recipes, modifying old recipes to working like an automaton.  Not interesting at all. Perfection IS highly overrated.  Imperfection alone makes earth go around? (into the Earth with Stephen Hawkings)

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