Recently I have been doing a great deal of baking as I find
baking a great way to relieve stress and anxiety which I get when revising. As
baking is a common break for me during the exam-period I end up making many
different baked goods, some of which I have never tried before. Although I tend
to enjoy most of the food that I bake obviously there are some flavours that
just aren’t for me. Although, obviously, you can’t have marmite or pepper in a cookie,
there are some flavours I despise that are actually a frequent ingredient in
baked goods. For example: I have never enjoyed ginger (not great for the dozens
of gingerbread men I bake at Christmas!) or other foods that many people will definitely
enjoy. Especially peanut-butter.
Peanut butter is, actually, an ingredient I use quite a lot
as most of my family find this spread very appetizing. Therefore, I am frequently
making peanut butter mug-cakes and other nutty bakes. However, as we definitely
had enough baked goods in the house for me, I decided to make a full batch of
peanut-butter cookies. As I don’t like peanut-butter I did not taste whilst I was
mixing the dough, or rolling out the mixture, as I normally would. Although everyone
enjoyed the peanut-butter biscuits, which I was not surprised about, I couldn’t
help noticing that they had clearly enjoyed the other food I make that I also
enjoy such as my butterscotch cookies or red velvet crinkle cookies.
I began to wonder whether taking a sneaky taste of the
mixture before you bake it or mould it actually has its benefits. Clearly for
me it does as my biscuits and cakes are definitely a great deal more popular
when I taste while I bake the batch. I decided to test my point further.
Without telling anyone what I was doing when I recently made peanut-butter cupcakes
(there is always a lot of peanut-butter in my house, so I like to make sure none
of it goes to waste!) I decided to bake them but make sure there was someone
with me at all times to taste and say, “that needs to be sweeter” or “there’s
too much peanut-butter.” Although no one
in my family would ever complain about too much peanut butter I actually found
that the cupcakes were a great success and also looked great. I even tried one and,
in all truth, didn’t find it that bad.
Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that in order to bake
something to you best possible abilities you must enjoy the what you are making.
Don’t try to bake something you don’t like just because it is healthier or less
calories than your original choice as the chances are you won’t enjoy it as
much as you will not know if you are baking it right or wrong. Furthermore, cooking
something you don’t like is like cooking something for the first time as you
clearly don’t like it so you therefore will find it hard to remember if what
you are tasting in the mixture is right or wrong.
Below is the recipe for my peanut-butter cookies, if you
like peanut-butter more, let’s see if you can make these treats better than I did.
Comment below how you got on
Peanut butter cookies: (makes 24)
Ingredients:
·
225g unsalted butter
·
250g crunchy peanut butter
·
200g caster sugar
·
220g soft brown sugar
·
2 eggs
·
300g plain flour
·
1 teaspoon baking powder
·
1/2 teaspoon salt
·
1 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
Method:
1.
Melt the butter and peanut butter together in a
big bowl
2.
Mix in the sugars
3.
Beat in the eggs
4.
In a separate, smaller bowl, mix the flour, baking
powder, bicarb and salt.
5.
Stir the dry mixture into the butter mixture and
mix until a you form a dough ball
6.
Wrap the dough in cling film and leave it in the
fridge for at least an hour (better longer than less than an hour, but no more
than 24 hours)
7.
Heat the oven to 190’c, gas mark 5
8.
roll the cookie dough into 2.5cm balls and place
on each baking tray (have them reasonably spaced out as they will get bigger)
9.
flatten each ball with a fork making a criss-cross
pattern
10. bake
in the oven for ten minutes or until the cookies start to crisp or go brown
11. let
them cool and the enjoy
if you enjoyed this post or would like me to try out any
more baking experiments or have any ideas in general then please comment below.
Lottie X
Insta- @eat.teen
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