My first batch of cookies!

I baked my first set of cookies – all by myself! I have baked cookies with friends earlier but this was the first time that I made them all by myself – yes, that excludes Pinch also who is around during most cooking experiments. Actually, I tweaked the original recipe SO MUCH that it became something entirely different. I used a mix of whole wheat flour and all-purpose flour (wanted it to be a little healthier), skipped the almond and vanilla extract (read someplace that these extracts are prepared using alcohol), used raw turbinado sugar in place of white sugar (no white sugar in our cooking) and replaced almond flour with almond meal (that’s what I found at Trader Joe’s).

I ended up with a lot of dough and made four batches. First one was good, second got a little burnt and the third and fourth ones were just fine.

End result – the cookies taste nice. They are mildly sweet since turbinado sugar has a very subtle edge to the sweetness as compared to the jarring taste of white sugar. With store-bought cookies and cakes, I can almost feel the sugar racing up my forehead – ugh. Our cookies were rather densely textured – maybe the whole wheat flour did that. To me, they taste a little like gol papdi. Oh, I forgot to mention – I added a generous measure of maple syrup to the dough since I adore the flavour of maple. Alas, it got submerged within the other flavours… I love maple so much – must look up some recipes for it.