Orange Chocolate Chip Cookies

I was ruminating over a conversation with an old associate I have known for over three years now and the fact he knew I blogged. That happened a few months ago. It was one of those familiar moments I have encountered when someone says, 'Aah, so you blog and you make food look good? Okay. Let's see, cook us something and let us say'. I get awfully nervous to a point of quivering knees and nervous breakdown. Neither it puts me into shoes of comfort, nor do I blush. I hate being judged. Its the kind of casual statement made to assume that you are a professional at the best. All bars are raised and expectations set too high. It's hard to satisfy such tastes, where preconceived bias swamps the confidence in me. It could turn anyone into cold feet. It's like a stab on your back testing your skills to restraint the blow, bridling any creativity you want to execute. Not really. I have bad days in my kitchen and I am no perfect for sure.

But little moments of joy come from those folks, unknowing to my penchant for cooking or being irrespective of the fact I blog or not, appreciate my food. For someone who does not know I blog, I post recipes, and yet appreciates that I have cooked good food, that's when you'll see me smile ear to ear. That moment of truth is really a winning moment for me. Honestly, I wish to create memories of food that can be remembered and revived by virtue.

You'll see this often that I don't spill out the fact to many that I blog. A lot of my close friends don't know I have a space out here. And with the ones who happen to know I do, more accidentally or through word of mouth and query about my passion in cooking or blogging in amusement, I wish to bury my face down in my hands and run away miles in embarrassment. Its such a strange awkwardness and I wonder if this has happened to any of you. Most readers whom I know are the ones whom I have never met personally, whom I have never known and strangely I feel the most comfortable posting here for them. Be it musings, my photographs or recipes, there is no prejudice what so ever. That for me is the most comforting factor. I wonder if I would ever be able to write and share so much here if my own folks were so regular at reading my blog. Thankfully I know they are not. That, for me is a consolation in many ways.

That brings me to this Orange Chocolate Chip Cookies here. A recipe that's strangely simple and unprejudiced. You throw in the said measures of all goodness and you have chocolate-y orange aromas wafting within minutes, it's zest leaving you in an all high. So true to the fact, the matrimony of orange and chocolate cannot go wrong. Sometimes you get the most out of the unexpected and that's what these Orange Chocolate Chip Cookies promise to do. Not just you, to your biased friends too!

Orange Chocolate Chip Cookies

INGREDIENTS

1/2 cup non-dairy margarine (can be replaced with vegetable oil)
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup white sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/8 cup orange juice
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips (dairy-free for vegan)
Zest from 2 oranges

DIRECTIONS

Beat the margarine along with both the sugars (brown and white) till it's light and fluffy. Next, add in the vanilla extract. Add the flour and salt, mix well. Dissolve baking soda in orange juice and add to mixture immediately. Stir with a wooden spoon and bring the entire mixture to form a lightly wet dough. Next add in the chocolate chips and stir them in. Drop by tablespoonful on to an un-greased cookie tray. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 10 minutes. Don't over bake!