Choc-Chip Goodness

I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies today. I found this recipe a couple of months back on allrecipes.com but adapted it a little bit more to my tastes - not much, just a couple of little tweaks that made them go from good to absolute heaven!
I'm not a big fan of crunchy cookies - although I will still continue to scoff them down! - and I love love love gooey chocolate chip cookies that are slightly crisp on the outside and soft and chewy in the middle. These cookies were touted as being the best chewy choc-chip cookie recipe but when I tried it the cookies came out quite crunchy - not hard, but just crumbly and dry :/ And they were very, very sweet.
Now don't get me wrong, I love sweet cookies, but I also love being able to scoff down a whole plate of cookies without feeling like I'm going to throw up. I could only eat these cookies when I had a cup of tea to wash them down with.

Yummy choc-chip cookies. Excuse the bad lighting, I was in a hurry to eat them!!

Now a word of warning, this recipe makes a lot. Like, a LOT. On the original recipe it said it made about 18 cookies. When I first cooked these cookies, just before Christmas, I needed to make enough for 4 food hampers I was making as gifts, plus I also wanted some leftover for me to hide in the closet and devour share with my family. I wanted at least 12 per hamper so I decided to make 4 batches, that should make roughly 72 cookies. Well I made a double batch first and ended up with at least 75 cookies :O And that was after eating some and losing count a couple of times! So I'd say that a better approximation at how many cookies this recipe makes is about 35ish.

Yummy Gooey Chewy Choc-Chip Cookies

2 cups plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
170g unsalted butter, melted
 1 cup brown sugar, packed
1 tablespoon vanilla essence
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 packet of chocolate chips (usually the equivalent of 1 cup)

1. Preheat the oven to 165 degrees celsius (I have a fan-forced oven which seems to run hotter than most so I only put my oven on 155 degrees). Line cookie sheets with baking paper.
2. Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt and set aside.
3. In a separate mixing bowl cream together the butter and sugar till well mixed and light.
4. Beat in the egg, egg yolk and vanilla until light and creamy.
5. Add in the sifted ingredients until just mixed.
6. Carefully fold in the chocolate chips.
7. Drop teaspoons of the cookie dough onto the cookie sheets about 2 inches apart.
8. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until the edges just start to lightly brown.
9. Cool on cookie sheets for a couple of minutes before transferring to cooling racks.
10. Put on the kettle, make yourself a cuppa and hide in the closet to enjoy!

Notes:

• In the past I've had success with substituting half the butter for crunchy peanut butter to make yummy peanut butter choc chip cookies. I haven't tried it with this recipe yet, so if anyone else wants to test it for me be sure to let me know how it goes!
• The first time I made these I added just the one bag of choc-chips per batch, today when I made them I made a double batch with 3 bags simply cos I wanted to use up the last bag in the pantry! They taste great with extra choc-chips but still lovely with just the one.
• The cookies will be quite pale in color, this isn't a crunchy choc-chip recipe which is normally more golden. They'll have just touch of color to the edges but not much.

Pretty As A Picture - Shutter Speed

So we've come to the second post in It's Overflowing's week-by-week photography course and this time it's all about shutter speed. It's pretty straightforward, but something that I didn't know before starting the course was that the faster the shutter speed, the less light allowed in. Makes sense but it's something I had never really thought about prior to reading her post.
I also didn't know what the numbers actually meant, so that's something else I've learnt. Just goes to show, you learn something new every day!
In her post she recommended taking photos of a dripping tap to practice with different shutter speeds. Well once again I had Baby Z on my lap so I took photos of the closest, most convenient item: the ceiling fan. It actually worked pretty well for this exercise. I knew what to expect (it's just shutter speed afterall, not like using white balance for the first time!) but I was still surprised at how using the 1/80 speed was fast enough to nearly freeze the fan blades, which was on the highest setting. My camera/lens combo I used could go right up to 1/4000 so I'm curious to see how a photo of something at that speed would turn out (with decent enough lighting of course!).
Before I put up my results I just want to quickly explain that I didn't have great lighting for these shots. In fact, I'm not particularly focusing on getting great lighting or great shots for now, I just want to learn how to use each feature on its own (and understand how it works/what it does) before I begin putting them together...although I do play around with the settings at other times. So the first lot of photos I'm putting up are the original shots, no editing whatsoever. The second lot of photos are the same photos but brightened up with Photoshop so you can actually see what the photos are of! Plus, I find it interesting to see the amount of light let in in each photo as the shutter speed was changed.

Not only can you see the differences in the obvious such as amount of blur from the fan blades and lighting, but you can see the clarity and sharpness of the image improving as the lens is allowed open for longer. Guess that's part of the whole letting in more light thing.

The next post is about ISO. She recommends doing this one outside in lots of natural light, so I may take a couple of days to come back with my results from this one as I don't get a lot of time outside at the moment!