To start this post off, I must mention that I am quite a big fan of the lovely site known by the name of YouTube. I've mentioned this on my blog before, but that was a long time ago and some of you might not have been here a long time ago.
One of the many people that I watch religiously on YouTube is Tanya Burr and she is known for her infamous cookie recipe that she stole! I know, scandalous, right? I wouldn't have know that tid bit of information myself if it wasn't for a very old vlog of hers explaining how to make these delicious cookies for the first time. And unlike that vlog, my first time making these cookies myself wasn't very successful. Here's the story...
Tanya is British. The British when baking measure in grams. Belle is American. The Americans when baking measure in cups. This was my first Problem. When inspiration to bake this cookies struck at the late hour of midnight, I took to the Internet in search of grams to cups conversion tables and converted the ingredients as followed:
British Recipe: -200g of butter American Conversion: -7/8 cup of butter
-300g of sugar -1 1/3 cups of of sugar
-1 egg -1 egg
-275g of flour -1 3/4 cups of flour***
-75g of cocoa powder -1/3 cup of cocoa powder
-a dash of milk -a dash of milk
-2 bars of chocolate -2 bars of chocolate
(Cadbury is Tanya's favorite) (whatever European goodness us Americans can
get our hands on)
(Cadbury is sold at places such as Target)
***Disclaimer: If you do the conversions yourself, you will find that the flour should actually be 1 1/4 cups but you'll read about my failed attempt and realize why you need more flour than this.
Belle and Ellie: Failed Attempt Take One (why yes, that does say take one meaning we failed twice)
Everything started out fine, just like everything always does just before your whole world comes crashing down before your very eyes. A little dramatic when referring to baking, you say? Absolutely not. I ran through the conversions with Ellie and everything seemed to be going right. Except the previous night I had been wondering something about the amount of suggested butter. Why would the conversion turn out to be 7/8 of a cup? That's not a normal baking measurement. I knew it was less than a cup, but how much? A tablespoon? Two? The next day this question still bothered me, so I brought it up to Ellie. She logically explained how several different measurements were broken down within that 7/8ths and we somehow came out with less than FOUR sticks of butter. Let me take a moment here to say that 1 stick of butter is 1/2 a cup, meaning 2 sticks of butter is 1 cup. Do you see the second Problem here. Carrying on...
I figured that whatever Ellie had told me was right, being I'm not the most confident in my math skills. I proceeded to melt the butter in the microwave to make it workable and mix the sugar into it.
Let me stop you here... While adding in the sugar, I noticed that there was not enough sugar in my sugar jar, so we had to make an impromptu trip to the nearest store to purchase some more. Remember this little fact for later... Also Problem 3 of the failed baking.
After returning home, we added the egg and mixed that in, followed by the flour (1 1/4 cups of it), and the cocoa powder. After mixing all of the ingredients together, I became increasingly aware of the sticky consistency of the mixture (meaning that rolling them into balls would be quite the challenge.) This was Problem 4. But never mind that, it was time to add in the 2 bars of chocolate! We had purchased 3 from Target, but decided that 2 was plenty.
Ellie attempted to roll out large balls of dough, but couldn't because the dough was sticking to her hands and not in the least bit getting spherical. I thought that this meant we needed to add more flour. I was right, but I decided this too late being there was already large pieces of chocolate in it making it difficult to properly stir more flour in. I thought, "screw it" (Problem 5) and we carried out rolling the dough.
We put them in the oven which was set at 400 degrees Fahrenheit (or 200 degrees Celsius) and being there was two trays, I put one on the top rack and one on the bottom rack and planned to switch them after 5 minutes (the baking time was 10 minutes total).
5 minutes quickly passed and it was time to switch the trays. I opened up the oven to find two trays with melted brown dough lakes in the middle of them, each with melted butter seeping out of it. Problem 6: no awesome Tanya Burr cookies. I fell to the floor yelling "WHY ME!" I just wanted to make some cookies and all I was able to get out of the experience was failure after failure.
Ellie and I pondered the event that occurred after cleaning off the trays of melted hopes and dreams, thinking of everything that could have gone wrong. There were many, but one Problem stood out above the rest. Lets revisit Problems 2 and 6, shall we? Problem 6 stated that butter was seeping out of the dough lake and Problem 2 stated that we put in not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 sticks of butter. Do you realize how much butter that is. 4 STICKS OF BUTTER, THAT'S HOW MUCH.
Belle and Ellie: Failed Attempt Take Two
So, we tried once more. But this time with less than 2 sticks of butter and our 1 lone chocolate bar. Again, I was suspicious of the sticky mixture, but I wasn't about to add more flour and risk another possible failed attempt.
I did what was done last time, placed one tray on the top rack and one on the bottom and had the intentions of swapping them after five minutes. When swapping them, I was pleasantly surprised to find actual cookie shapes and not another dough lake. They baked for 5 more minutes and we took them out of the oven. One tray had semi decent cookie shapes, but they weren't as thick and circular as Tanya's are. The second tray had very flat and quite a bit smooshed together cookies. I ended up cutting those up into squares.
My conclusion on the whole failed attempts is that A: I used FAR to much butter the first time, B: I needed to add more flour on both attempts so that the dough is able to stick and form pleasant looking cookies, and C: They should have been slightly smaller balls than what we had made them.
So all in all, the second batch tasted good but they were definitely not Tanya Burr cookies.
I was still not satisfied with my failure though. Baking cookies is my thing, and I couldn't let my image be tarnished by 4 sticks of butter. I recruited someone else for the job the following week.
Belle and Sammie: The Attempt is a Success
Everything was carried out the same way that day, except I was planning on putting in a half a cup more of flour making it 1 3/4 of a cup. When I went to open the flour jar, I noticed that we didn't have enough flour. Sound familiar? We ran out of yet another crucial ingredient (refer to Problem 3 of the first failed attempt.) So we rushed to the nearest store to purchase more flour and carried out the rest of the baking process with ease. I had every ounce of faith, hope, and fiber of my very being within these cookies. When the five minute switch of the oven came, I burnt my thumb but I was incredibly happy to see that every cookie appeared lovely thus far. The ten minutes was up and I took both batches out of the oven to find 8 cookies shaped like thee actual Tanya Burr cookies. I was over the moon with happiness. OH, and yes, they were delicious.
I hope these horrible baking stories don't turn you off from baking entirely yourself. I promise that as long as you follow my little tips, you will succeed in having perfect Tanya Burr cookies the first time around. I'll leave you with a little photo of the deliciousness.
-Belle xx
P.S: Several of the YouTubers that I also watch created this app at the end of last year called 'Storie.' It's basically a platform that allows users to make simple videos of their lives with easy cut and editing tools and it's one of my favorite things ever. I like to describe it as "YouTube for the lazy." If you prefer to watch my failures instead of reading about them, you can download the app and follow me! My user name is belle_was_here just like my blog (only with underscores, of course.)
