Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

My mom loves baking, as I've mentioned already around the blogs and forums here. She's a very good baker, and she bakes when she's bored. When she asked out loud what would be her weekend baking project, my brothers and I begged her to please not bake, because that would just mean more temptation. Then again, we didn't put up much resistance either when she insisted anyway.

Yes, it's a miracle I can stay slim even when I have a mom who bakes as well and as often as she does. Diet and exercise have obviously helped, but let me share another secret—my mom adds less sugar than what a recipe says.

By doing so, my family and I have come to prefer our desserts to be not too sweet. Since our taste buds are now pretty sensitive to sweetness, we now find most desserts from cafés, bakeries, and restaurants to be too sweet for our taste. Either we order just one or two desserts that we split among the five of us, or we don't order anything at all, because we know Mom can make something better!

I wish I can give a guide as to how much sugar you should knock back off your recipes, because it's arbitrary from recipe to recipe, and may also depend on the other ingredients. Sugar also adds moisture to a recipe, which explains why a batch of cupcakes, whose sugar we drastically knocked down, ended up pretty dry.

This weekend, my mom baked a batch of double chocolate chip cookies that are to die for. It's like eating a chocolate bar, because it's studded with chocolate chips. I already felt naughty that I had two cookies yesterday (one after lunch, another after dinner), but if I didn't make my move, my brothers would have cleared them out without leaving anything for me. Hmph.

I also enjoyed some red wine over the weekend, a nice California red. I may also have to take a one-day break from my usual exercise schedule, as I felt fatigue in my legs pretty quickly while I was playing basketball yesterday. I'm not really strict with my exercise schedule, but I do listen to my body.

Hope everyone has a great week! ^_^

Saturday
Breakfast: Hungarian sausage, garlic rice, tsokolate
Mid-morning: Chocolate chip-peanut butter-oatmeal cookie, coffee with low-fat milk
Snack: Roasted macadamia nuts
Dinner: (at Eat Well, Global City) King Dao spare ribs with fried banana, sliced beef with broccoli, Chinese chorizo with taro rice, fried noodles with seafood, masachi with white chocolate, oolong tea

Sunday
Breakfast: Cheese muffin, pan de sal with queso de bola, coffee with low-fat milk
Lunch: Tortang giniling, fried saba
Dessert: Double chocolate chip cookie, low-fat milk
Snack: Roasted macadamias
Dinner: Southern-style chicken, brown rice
Dessert: Double chocolate chip cookie, queso de bola, San Antonio Winery Cardinale red wine