I am super excited as I post this recipe, reason being twofold. One, it’s a new year, and what better way to begin year 2016 than baking chocolate cookies. Second, we are celebrating first anniversary of our YouTube channel KaliMirch.
Yippy!! We just reached first of the many milestones of this journey that has been so far like a thrilling roller-coaster ride. Jan 4th 2015, was the day we shot our first video using our Point and Shoot Canon IXUS 105. The videos that we had shot was merged and processed to be transformed into a movie using movie maker, and we shared the result with a group of friends and family on 5th Jan. We got feedback of varied degrees, some encouraging, some brutal but we took it on our chin, as it came from people who meant a lot to us. We, however could not incorporate all those suggestions in that video and decided that we will be building upon those ideas gradually brick by brick. We published our first recipe on our YouTube channel on 8th of Jan 2015.
It would be an understatement to say that few days or rather weeks that followed were chaotic, it was complete madness. We were scampering with initial excitement, trying to do too many things in too less time, trying to shoot too many videos too frequently. I think we were excited by the feedback(comments) that we were receiving on our YouTube channel and we wanted to keep the momentum going. We were reading too many blogs, too many best practices that were scattered all over internet. Some would say posting a video daily is a best practice, some would advise thrice a week and we were feeling bogged down with so much information. We realized that pursuing your passion along with a full time job can be a demanding affair. We needed to find our rhythm, a pace that we could keep up with. We had also set up a Facebook page during this time in order to share the updates with a large base of foodies. By the end of second month, we had identified our pace, and had set up a schedule that we would stick to no matter what.
We also learnt, along the way, to reciprocate to feedback gracefully. If the social world out there is encouraging, it can also get obnoxious sometimes. A random person sitting anywhere in the world can use choicest of cuss words for your recipe, call you an idiot for posting it, but you got to remember that number of people who appreciate your efforts are more than select few who would criticize you no matter what. However, this journey has also taught us to learn from criticism. Not all critics must be ignored, if you do so, do it at your own risk. Critics can contribute to your learning and you need to wisely pick up that lesson.
By the end of April, we were ready with this blog site and the day that we hit that Publish button it gave us an immense happiness, for the second time. We kept discovering various resources like Food Gawker, Yummly, recipeshub, Pinterest and several other sites which can contribute in driving traffic to your website. I would prefer writing in more detail about our experience with food blogging in a post dedicated for that topic which I plan to do soon.
We learnt how important it is to stay prepared all the time. As the festivities begin, viewers start searching for videos catering to that festive occasion then as a You Tuber your channel must have that video few days if not weeks in advance. We learnt how important annotations are in your videos, which have now been replaced by Cards. They facilitate user navigate to some related videos or to the videos you want them to see.
We learnt how important the comment section could be. The comment section in YouTube is your platform where you interact with your viewers, establish rapport with them, make good relations, make friendships, and learn new things. It is imperative to respond to these comments in an appropriate way. Viewers spend some of their time in watching your videos and some more in sharing their feedback by their comments. So it becomes important that we value their efforts and respond to them and don’t leave their queries unanswered.
We learnt how important thumbnails can be for our videos. They help your videos stand out from numerous videos that appear in the listing of user search. A Viewer is first going to savor your recipes through his eyes and a dull and insipid picture is not going to inspire him nor going to tingle his palate. The picture must get him excited and want him to click on your video.
I must admit that other than building onto these technical areas, on personal front we have our fair share of lessons learnt. The biggest I would say is patience. There were days when recipe would not turn as we would have wanted them to and had to be totally scrapped, or the shot did not go as you intended, or the light is bad, or the shadows are harsh. During the initial days, we would crib and sometimes lose temper but later we learnt to stay more patient. If you like to work in silo, then most of this would not apply to you, but if you share your passion with a partner, like we do then you must learn to trust your partner. The duties must be segregated, who would conceptualize a recipe, who would design it in your kitchen, who handles technical areas, videos, pictures, editing, lights, angles, whiteboards, camera etc. Well there are so many things, and it is advisable that you share your responsibilities and do not try to step onto each other toes. Make a pact that you would give each other creative independence, and would trust each other’s judgement. However, this should not deter you from sharing your inputs if you think they are worth providing and can enhance the quality of your end product.
We have just reached our first milestone, and we know that there are many more that await us. We would like to pause here and thank all of our viewers, our readers, our friends and family who have been with us all along. Please keep your feedback, your comments, questions, recipe request coming. They help us to do better as we evolve every day.
As we have reached this milestone, we feel a renewed sense of excitement building into us, and we feel rejuvenated to resume our journey ahead.
Thanks Again!!
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Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 10
- 100 grams wheat flour
- 40 grams chopped walnuts
- 200 grams dark chocolate cut into small pieces
- 60 gram butter (at room temperature)
- 30 ml milk
- 70 grams brown sugar
- 30 grams white granulated sugar
- 1 tbsp curd
- 2 tbsp instant coffee powder
- ½ tsp baking soda
- In a large bowl, put butter,Add brown sugar, white sugar.
- Whisk them with an electric hand mixer for 5-7 minutes.
- After whisking for 7 minutes, mixture becomes fluffy and light in color.
- Add wheat flour, baking soda,Add coffee powder, curd.
- Knead them into a dough adding milk in small quantities at a time.
- Dough should be sticky and of spoon drop consistency.
- Now add chocolate chunks and walnuts and fold them in again.
- Put the dough in a ziploc bag and refrigerate for 8-10 hours.
- After 8 hours, remove the cookie dough from refrigerator.
- Pre-heat Oven at 180°C.
- Grease the baking tray with butter.Scoop out a small portion of dough.
- Line up cookies dough on baking tray and put them in oven.
- Put the tray on low rack and bake cookies for 15 minutes.
- After the cookies are taken out of oven, transfer them to a rack and let them cool down.
- Coffee and Chocolate flavored Walnut Cookies are ready.These cookies can be relished with coffee or warm milk
Click here to watch recipe video
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