First, I must confess that as wonderful as it was, I just couldn't cope with the brownie. I tried, but I couldn't. I can't even remember what happened to it - I think perhaps I sent it to work with the husband and left it to his shift to cope with it.
I took another run at the pistachio and white chocolate chunk cookies after that which were one of my first Global Baker efforts. The first time, I could tell they weren't anywhere near as brilliant as they should have been, although you could taste and see the promise. I just couldn't quite work out what went wrong though. I think I covered this at length while sobbing into my failed cookies at the time. I possibly didn't admit to the sobbing. A failed cookie is a terrible thing, you must understand.
This time, I upped my game and concentrated a bit more. Firstly, the recipe said soft dark brown sugar whereas I used normal brown sugar and it turns out, there's quite a difference. I also chopped up a white chocolate block for a significantly better quality chocolate, rather than using baking chocolate drops/buttons. Again, big difference. And it showed. The cookies looked completely different, tasted completely different and the texture was bang-on.
I've also made them about 3 times since ... (and may have to again just because the photo I took just doesn't show them to be as gorgeous as they really looked in the flesh) ... kind of revelling in my own glory, because honestly, if you can do a victory lap more than once, why wouldn't you?
Stay tuned for a post on exercising off cookies ...