Baked Kale Chips

Three simple ingredients: kale, oil, salt.

I had never tried kale, except maybe mixed into a salad at a bistro, but recently, my colleague brought in some highly addictive tortilla chips purchased at Costco that include kale in the mix of "healthy" ingredients. Since I found them quite tasty, I got up the nerve to try a "crunchy granola" recipe: baked kale chips.

The verdict? Surprisingly edible - that mystery flavour I enjoyed in the tortilla chips has been identified, and am willing to try again some time. Admittedly, my spouse wasn't pleased with the smell of freshly baked kale, and refused to try any.

New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookies (Jacques Torres recipe)

Last week, I finally caved and made a recipe I've been wanting to try for a long while now: the famous chocolate chip cookie recipe that ran in the New York Times in 2008 and can be found everywhere online. They were delicious. Amazing. I WILL make these again.

I made a couple substitutions (artificial vanilla instead of the natural kind, and a blend of milk, semisweet and dark Belgian chocolate) so I didn't have to made a separate trip to the store. I also didn't quite make it to the 24-hour refrigeration mark - I ended up baking 22 hours in.

The biggest change I made, however, was to the size of the cookies. This recipe is for HUMONGOUS cookies. I measured mine out (just a bit over a level Tbsp each), and made just over 7 dozen normal-sized cookies about 2.5" across - many more than the 1.5 dozen this recipe is supposed to make. If you made the smaller cookies like me, you should bake for somewhere around 8-10 minutes.

Since I had so many more than expected, I bagged up a couple dozen for my colleagues (see picture), sent a container to work with my spouse, and took a couple dozen to the pottery studio.

Nutrition information: for a serving of two cookies
Calories: 200
Potassium: 0
Fat: 9
Carbohydrates: 27
Fibre: 1
Protein: 2
Weight Watchers Points Plus: 5 (3 for a single cookie)

My rating: a perfect combination of sweet chocolate with sea salt. Everyone loved them. However, because of the quality and the price of some of the ingredients (namely 1-1/4lb of Belgian chocolate), I'll keep these for just an occasional rotation.