Time for a recipe...

So far this blog has written about my eating adventures outside the kitchen, so I thought I'd start to document my cooking habits. With the arrival of my oven a couple of months ago I decided I wanted to get back into baking. I'm not baking under optimum conditions unfortunately, Shanghai isn't the best city in the world to buy good baking ingredients, and my oven is not so much an oven as a grill with a temperature setting, but I thought I'd give it a try anyway. I'm trying to bake at least one batch of cookies a week this month (I seem to be actively opposed to dieting at the moment), and this week it was the turn of the peanut butter cookie. I'm still messing around with the perfect cookie dough, the right temperature and the right consistency, but the verdict was pleasingly positive. They were chewy and not too sweet but Ali thought my previous batch of milk chocolate and toffee were better s0 I think I'll add some white chocolate or toffee to spice it up next time. I'm currently challenging for the title of 'better than subway cookies', which seems to be the benchmark for Dave, Trish and Luke.
The recipe is below, but my baking style is not very accurate. I tend to go by taste and instinct rather than following exact recipes, and often add a little more or a little less, this usually gives me an excuse to eat cookie dough throughout the process.

Peanut Butter Cookies
Makes 30

375g Caster Sugar
250g Brown Sugar
700g Plain Flour
200g Unsalted butter, softened
3tsp Baking Powder
3-4 tbsp Crunchy Peanut Butter
3-4 eggs
1 Vanilla Pod

Preheat the oven to 160 c. Mix the sugars, flour and baking powder together with the seeds scraped out from the vanilla pod and then cream together with the softened butter, until all the butter is mixed in with the flour and sugar.
Add the eggs one by one and mix after each egg, until you get a cookie dough mixture, the eggs should be holding the mixture all together so you get a big wad of cookie dough, if it's too dry add the fourth egg and if it's too wet and sticks to your hands too much add a bit more flour.
Add the peanut butter and mix thoroughly, I actually used my hands to do this but a wooden spoon is probably best. I kept adding peanut butter as I went along so I would taste it to check if it's enough.
Tear off chunks of the dough and roll them into evenly sized balls (if the dough is too wet or sticky then you need to add a bit more flour), then push each ball down with the palm of your hand. I like the dough to quite thin but thick enough to make the cookie soft and chewy. Place them on a greased baking tray, making sure they're far enough apart so the cookies won't merge together in the oven, and bake for about 10 minutes if you like them chewy, or 12 for crunchy cookies. When I take them out the oven they're slightly golden, but so soft and almost falling apart, any longer and they won't be soft enough, they eventually will cool and you should have a prefect yummy cookie. The recipe I adapted this from suggested the temperature be 180c, but my oven has a mind of its own.

I've just realised I'm terrible at writing recipes. I tend to just improvise as I'm going along, so you might have to do this too. Oops.