Ram’s First Blog Post

My love for cookies started when I was a 7 year old boy living in LA with my mother and sister.

We had moved to America from India, warmly embraced by our Aunt and Uncle who took us in.

My mother took a short computer course and managed to find a job, working long hours, a single mother struggling to support us on her own.

I was in school, coming home every afternoon to an empty house.

The solution my mother found was for me to go to a family of friends of ours, for a few hours until my mother came back from work. They were a young couple with two small children, a cute little baby girl they called “fussy” and an energetic boy a year or two older.

I would walk to their house after school and spend a few hours with them, playing with the children, doing my homework and hanging out with them.

Our time together would begin every day with a precious ceremony: the “milk and cookies ritual, an important ritual in American society in those days. A memory I would take with me, evolving into our daily family “coffee break”, a few moments of pure joy with the whole family drinking coffee or chocolate milk and of course fresh cookies.

I would arrive from school, put my bag in the corner, wash my hands and sit down at the table. Malka, the mother of the family, would serve a plate of hot cookies straight from the oven. The cookies were served with a glass of cold milk. The smell spread through the house, becoming one of my favorite of smells. It was my first taste of heaven on earth.

This was where I began to value the ability to make the perfect cookie, chewy, not too sweet or too heavy, the kind that you never got sick of.

I also began to develop the intricate skill of matching the size of the bite into the cookie to the sip of milk, so that the cookies and the milk would last as long as possible and be finished at the exact same time.

After the ritual came to an end, I would play with the kids and help around the house.

Is there anything better than enjoying a tray of hot cookies straight out of the oven with people you love?

So here is my recipe for the perfect chocolate chip cookie.

Very easy to make and delicious.

Recommended with a cup of coffee or a glass of milk, preferably while still warm from the oven.

(The recipe is my own slight adaptation to the recipe of Carine Goren)

Ingredients:

200 grams butter

1/3 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

2 + 2/3 cups flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 Tbsp. corn flour

Chocolate chips or bittersweet chocolate cut into small pieces

Mix butter (at room temperature) with both types of sugar. Add vanilla and eggs and mix to receive a fluffy mixture. Add remaining ingredients and mix shortly, until blended in. Add chocolate and mix for a few seconds.

Roll into balls and bake on oven pan coated with baking paper, for 12 minutes at 180 degrees.

Enjoy!