Two posts in one day!

Must be a record. Lol. cant belive how much I've managed to get done today. Cleaned rooms, ironing, scrubbing the carpet, baking. Maddness! lol. So decided to do a bit of 'work' too. As I'm home a lot I do a lot of online questionnaires and market reserch. One of these is being a bzz agent where I try things out and let people know what I think. At the moment its Splenda. Which I love as till now I've been using Tescos own make sweetner in my tea which makes it fizzy which is so wrong!
Anyway, I decided to try baking cookies with it and seeing the difference and was really surprised. I actually like the splenda version better than the normal version!
Heres what I did incase you want to try it yourself. :)
You will need:
115g unsalted butter
4tbs Splenda (or 115g of normal sugar if you just want to make normal cookies)
70g brown sugar
1/2 tbs vanilla extract
1 large egg
160g plain flower
1/4 tbs bicarb of soda
choc chips or whatever you like for adding.

1- Preheat oven to 180 degrees or gas mark 4. Grease 2-3 baking sheets.
2- Mix butter and sugars untill creamy. If using Splenda it will look less smooth than normal sugar. This is fine. Example is below, this is Splenda

This is normal sugar. Don't know why it does this but been told its normal. lol

3- Mix in Vanilla and egg.
4- Add flour, bicarb, good pinch of salt and choc chips (or whatever you choose).

5- Spoon teaspoons of the mixture onto the baking sheets. Space them well apart as they do flatten out a great deal.
6- Bake in oven for approx 10 minutes. this does seem to vary with every oven but really its untill they look more solid on top, but still give a little if pressed in the middle. Splenda cookies dont brown as much as normal sugar ones so be careful.
7- Allow to cool for a few minitues then put onto a wire rack to cool fully.
And you're done!

As a matter of experimentation (and not eating more cookies, of course ;) ) I also made some with normal sugar for comparison. I found I actaully prefered the Splenda ones. :) While the splenda cookies dodnt brown as much, they also didnt rise as much which made them very thin and as a result more crisp. They were also slightly chewy and hubby says had a slight popcorny taste. So I'm guessing its something to do with caramalisation of the sugar. Heres a photo for comparason. left is Splenda cookie, right is normal sugar.

I also made some orange flavour cupcakes. But more on that tomorrow. :)