Come to the dark side, we have cookies!

This is my all time favorite recipe.

My sister was baking cookies for the first time so we decided to split the recipe and go ahead with half of all the ingredients.

This recipe makes about 4 dozen cookies and that's quite a lot of work for beginners in baking.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 and 1/4 cups regular sugar

1 and 1/4 cups brown sugar

225g butter

1/2 cup oil

1 tablespoon vanilla essence

2 eggs

4 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

In a large bowl beat both sugars, butter, oil, vanilla essence and eggs.

Caution! At this stage the batter tastes extremely yummy so please avoid licking it.

In another dry bowl first mix the dry ingredients (i.e. flour, salt & baking soda) then add it to the above mixture with spoon.

Mix well with hands to form dough. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Preheat oven to 175°C/350°F.

Take a tablespoon of dough and make a cookie. Place cookies on a cookie sheet or baking tray.

There is no need to grease the tray.

Bake for 10 minutes ONLY. Cool slightly. Remove tray from oven and cool completely.

Staring my baking blog

After baking passionately for the past few years, I am finally starting my own baking blog.

This idea was given to me by my very dear friend shumaila. When I had told her about my love for baking few months ago, she had suggested that I blog about it. At that time I was busy working as a programmer and had no time for anything.

I always wanted to gather all my favorite recipes at one place for quicker accessibility and so for that purpose, what better way than blogging!

This recipe that I am sharing is adapted from here. I like to call it the 'Apple Cake'. It goes best with tea at breakfast.

My sister is having a go at baking these days so I am guiding her as I take pictures for my blog.

Apple Cake

3 eggs

3 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 cups regular sugar

1 1/2 cups vegetable oil

2 teaspoons vanilla essence

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Apples, peeled and finely chopped (2 cups)

1 cup chopped nuts (almonds or walnuts) - optional

Preheat oven to 175°C/350°F.

Grease and flour baking cake pan.

I prefer to line bottom of pan with butter paper and then grease it too. This not only helps to remove the cake from the pan when baked but also makes washing the pan a great deal easier as the pan will be practically clean!

In a clean dry bowl first mix the dry ingredients i.e. flour, salt, cinnamon powder & baking soda.

Now in a separate bowl beat sugar, oil, vanilla essence and eggs with electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy. Beat in flour mixture until smooth. Stir in chopped apples and nuts.

Pour batter into the pan. Bake for 30 minutes or till knife inserted in center comes out clean.