Chocolate-drizzled praline cookies

“A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand”

The husband and I love 'Crossword' bookstore. We always tend to chance upon some great bargains. One such was 'The Little Guide to Cookies'!

This book contains over 60 recipes, all absolutely fabulous and all at Rs. 125! The best part of the book is that is gives detailed illustrations and techniques (written & pictorially depicted) on how to put these cookies together. The book is divided into 7 sections: drop, bar, cutout, sliced, shaped & molded, pressed and special cookies with ingredients (or atleast close substitutes!) that can be found in stores.

Look at the some of the fabulous stuff one can find in this book!

I decided to start with the very first recipe, Chocolate-drizzled praline cookies. The recipe starts with this note, "Be careful not to over bake these pecan-laden (here walnut) treats: they are best when nice and chewy. Begin to check for doneness after about 5 minutes.

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

125 gms butter, softened
220 gms brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
185 gms flour
125 gms toasted pecan or walnuts (which is what I used)
90 gms semi sweet chocolate chips (this was only for the chocolate-drizzle, I added about 2 tbsp into the batter)
1 tsp shortening (I had none)

Method:

1. In a medium bowl beat the butter with an electric beater on medium or high speed for 30 sec
2. Add the brown sugar and baking powder beat till combined
3. Beat in egg and vanilla
4. Stir in flour with a spatula or wooden spoon
5. Drop dough with a rounded spoon 2 inches apart and bake in a preheated oven for 8-10 mins.
6. Remove cookies and cool.
7. In a plastic piping bag, add the chips and shortening, and melt over warm water.
8. Snip off a small corner and pipe over cookies.

Now, I'm not used to the luxuries of using chocolate chips for the purpose of melting, simply for the purpose of convenience! Oh no! I chop up the chocolate into bite sized morsels and melt away. Chips are strictly for decoration! Its sacrilege to melt them, especially when not so freely available! So when I saw chips in the list of ingredients I naturally assumed they were for the batter and happily started adding tbsp after another - until I read what the method bit of the recipe said. Regular dark chocolate was used for the drizzle.

Also, I halved the recipe.