Bleeding Cookies

I know. You are all so bored. Right? So bored that you started clicking on my ancient posts which explains why those posts are now making it into the favorites of the week chart. Tsk! 

So hello there! I am back. I am back to tell you about my bloody cookies. I mean melting cookies. No, I meant leaking cookies. Whatever. Where do I begin?

It all started on a public holiday. As usual, I like to tidy up the house. And that led to me inspecting my pantry. I found these.

Swiss Chocolate and Chocolate Eclairs (toffee coated with chocolate). Sweet. There were two of each. Now I remember. They were from a hamper gifted to me for Chinese New Year. But yikes! Look at the expiry date.

That's how retailers get rid of old stock. They package all these expiring goods into attractive hampers and charge a nice price. You buy these hampers as gifts and in the process help to transmit these near expiry goods to your relatives, friends and associates. 

Though I did not spend a single sen on these goodies, still I don't want to waste the money of the person who gave these to me. So I opened a chocolate eclair just to check if it was OK.

I meant to sample just one, but I guess I got carried away. It tasted alright and so did the chocolate. Suddenly, I had a brain wave and thought - hey! why not incorporate these into cookies? And so that's what I did. Genius, madam! Genius!

I took out a block of butter from the fridge to soften. When the butter was soft enough, I unwrapped it and discovered something that made me very mad.

The butter was mouldy! Drat! Double drat! Make that a triple! How could this happen. Did my butter expire too?

No! It still had some ways to go. I suspect that the handling at the supermarket was bad, hence the contamination of the butter. With a heavy heart, I tossed the butter into the bin. That's a lot of money wasted. 

I had no choice but to take another block out of the fridge and wait for it to soften. When it was soft enough, I proceeded to make the batter and mixed the chopped up chocolate and chocolate eclairs into the batter.

Then I thought there was not enough chocolate in the batter. So I took the other bar of milk chocolate, broke in into small pieces and added them into the batter.

I used a small ice cream scoop to scoop the batter and baked away. After 16 minutes in the oven, that's when I realized I wasn't so genius after all. My cookies were bleeding melted toffee.

Cookies pancet.

Arrghh!!! You will notice that some of the cookies were OK. They retained their shape unlike others which were bursting with melted chocolate eclairs.

Behold the devastation. Some of the cookies stuck to the baking paper and they broke apart when I attempted to remove them.

But seriously, these cookies were fantastic. I picked up the broken pieces and had a taste. Wonderful! These cookies were so tasty and more than made up for my disappointment with the big old mess that they were.

What a tasty mess. Yummeh!!

Noms! These are the best tasting failures ever! Essentially, my cookies could be categorized into bleeders and the non-bleeders.

The bleeders....

and the non-bleeders...

Honestly, it was the bleeders that tasted the best.

I'll need to tweak (please note, it is tweak not twig. Excuse me for being antsy) the recipe and methodology to minimize the leaking. Maybe, I should chill the cookie dough first or freeze the chocolate eclairs. I still have one more packet of chocolate eclairs, and I will do some research and development when I am in the mood.

Anyway, it was fun utilizing the "expired" chocolate and chocolate eclairs and making them into something so imperfect and yet so perfect!

Chocolate and Chocolate Eclairs Cookies

Recipe source : Phong Hong

Ingredients :

- 250g self-raising flour

- 250g butter

- 2 eggs

- 1/4 cup white sugar

- 1 tsp vanilla extract

- 225g chocolate eclairs, chopped into small pieces

- 250g milk chocolate, chopped into small pieces

Note : I used very little sugar because the chocolate eclairs and milk chocolate are already very sweet.

Method :

1. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy (can do it manually or using an electric mixer)

2. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

3. Add vanilla extract and continue to mix.

4. Add flour and fold into the butter mixture until evenly mixed.

5. Add chopped chocolate eclairs and milk chocolate

6. Using a small ice cream scoop, scoop batter onto a lined baking tray and bake for 16 minutes (I rotated the pan at half time for even baking).

Note : After noting how my cookies bled, you will need to remedy my method so that you produce cookies that do not fall apart.