Today was baking day again. I havent baked in almost a month, and my fingers were itching to do something, and everytime I walk by famous amos and get a whiff of the cookies, I remind myself that I can do just as good.

And today, after about 4hrs later, I was rewarded with the fruits of my labour and was highly pleased with the results. I tried a new recipe today- chocolate viennese fingers. I had bought a piping set a month ago and was dying to use it, and finally got a change to do use it today. It was relatively easy to make. Cream the butter and sugar, add egg yolks, add flour and put the mixture into the piping bag. I initially had difficulty piping,but it got easier with more piping. After 12mins in the oven, out came golden and wonderfully soft viennese fingers. I put it aside to cool and started on chocolate chip pecan cookies.
I soon realized that it was no mean feat juggling so many things. The kitchen was in a mess. My mum came in and tsked at me quite a few times. I was toasting nuts, creaming butter and sugar, melting chocolates and processing oats all at the same time. It is a wonder nothing went wrong and I didnt forget any step. And while I was baking,quite a lot of cookie dough went into my stomach. They are really quite delicious, but of course the real thing is better. I used the following recipe for my famous chocolate chip cookie, and I modified it a little and also added raisins to it. I got this recipe from a recipe book a long time ago and have been using it ever since. It is actually called the Neiman-Marcus chocolate chip cookie and the story goes of how someone actually called up the department store(Neiman marcus) for their "secret" chocolate chip recipe and was told the charge would be ""two-fifty", and the person said to charge the bill to his credit card, only realizing later that the actual charge was $250, and he decided to get even by passing the recipe around. And since then, it has been going round and round till it got into my kitchen =)

Ingredients:
2 ½ cups quick cooking oats
2 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup salted butter, room temp
1 cup granulated white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cups chopped nuts(optional: pecan, walnut…etc)
12 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chip

1. Adjust 2 racks to divide oven into thirds. Preheat to 375F(190celsius)
2. In food processor, process oats until they are ground into fine powder.
3. Combine oats, flour, baking powder and soda in large bowl.
4. Beat butter, sugars on medium high speed until light and creamy. Beat in eggs and vanilla until well-blended(do not overbeat at this stage). Add flour mixture at low speed until blended. Stir in nuts and chocolate chip until well distributed. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased baking sheets, 1 inch apart.
5.Bake 15-20 mins until golden brown. Reverse sheets during baking to ensure even browning. Immediately transfer to wire racks to cool.

I divided the dough into two, and added raisin and cinammon powder to one, and chocolate chip and pecan to the other. And i didnt measure the exact amount of raisins and chips and nuts I used, everything was by agaration. The recipe can yield quite a lot of cookies, thus I had to bake it in many batches. And when the last batch came out, wonderfully golden and crunchy(the best of the lot), I heaved a sigh of relief. But the work was not over.. Back to the viennese fingers, I melted 100g of dark chocolate containing 72% of cocoa solids with 30g of butter in the mircowave oven and coated the fingers with it. It was really messy and the final result was amaterish, but for a first timer, I thought it was pretty good. And of course the taste is simply amazing. It reminded me so much of the marks and spencer chocolate viennese biscuits that I adore. I loved how tender and soft it was, and the dark chocolate made it really chocolatey and sinful. I think that I would use milk chocolate or semi sweet chocolate the next time as the dark chocolate I used today was too bitter due to the high cocoa content and most people might not like it.

By the time I was done,the kitchen was full of the aroma of cookies, if only smells can be bottled..all the cookies turned out really awesome and crunchy and tasty. I like making mini cookies as that is the only way I can get it crunchy, I really wonder how people can make large cookies crunchy too. I normally avoid the large cookies as they turn out kind of tough and neither chewy nor crunchy. Hmm, guess I would stick with what I do best, and besides,its easier to give it out smaller cookies as well. I had better give out my cookies tomorrow before I finish everything by my self...heheh

Recipe for viennese fingers, taken from the baker who cooks:
Viennese Fingers
100g unsalted butter
1/3 cup icing sugar
2 egg yolks
1 and 1/2 tsps vanilla essence
1 cup plain flour
100g dark cooking chocolate, grated30g butter

Preheat oven to moderate 180 degrees celcius.
Grease baking tray and line with greased baking paper.Beat together butter and sugar until light and creamy. Add yolks and vanilla essence and beat well. Add flour and stir until all ingredients are combine and batter is smooth
Spoon mixture into a piping bag fitted with fluted 1cm piping nozzle. Pipe mixture into wavy lengths (approx. 6cm) on prepared tray.Bake for about 12 minutes or until lightly golden. Transfer biscuits on a wire rack to cool.Melt chocolate and butter in a bowl and dip half of each biscuit in the chocolate. Allow to set on greaseproof paper