Kitchen Alchemy

  When I was a teenager I worked at Kmart Bakery as my after school job. Our Kmart was listed as a "superstore", with the full Kmart variety store on one side, and a Coles supermarket on the other side, complete with butcher, delicatessen and bakery.   For girls working the casual shifts at Kmart Bakery, our main job was to package the baked goods.  On Saturdays, we bagged the bread rolls, pizzas, finger buns and everything that came out of the ovens.  We even sliced the loaves of bread, with a machine that we were lucky didn't take out fingers off. Once the fresh bread was out on the shelves, we turned to the finished sweet goods.  Sponge cakes, vanilla slices, lamingtons and custard tarts all had to be packaged on foam trays, wrapped in Glad wrap, heat sealed, and price tagged. One of the slices that always puzzled the heck out of me was the Hedgehog Slice.  As a devotee of Chocolate Caramel Slice, I couldn't understand what Hedgehog Slice was and ho...

  Levain Bakery's soft cookies have been enormously popular for the past few years.  In Australia, Thic Bic have been the forerunners in these cookies, creating gorgeous flavours like Biscoff, Pandan & Coconut and of course the classic Chocolate Chip.  Another great producer of these cookies is Brooki's Bakehouse, who ship thousands of boxes all over the world daily. After a request for a softer cookie from my son, I finally decided to give these cookies a crack.  I'm pretty happy with how they've turned out.  They're easy to bake and very satisfying to make.   Pro tip: You don't have to make the giant-sized cookies like the commercial bakers are doing - after all we need to save room for other delicious baked goods, right? Ingredients 250g butter 1 cup brown sugar, lightly packed 1/2 cup caster sugar 1 tsp vanilla essence 2 eggs 1.5 cups self raising flour 1.5 cups plain flour 1.5 tsps baking powder 1 tblsp corn flour 250g dark chocolate chips 1 c...