One vice I used to have when I went food shopping was to buy those soft American style cookies they'd sell in bags of four for over a pound. I think I've found a recipe that beats them hands down and doesn't contain any of the nasty E numbers (although they have plenty of sugar!).
125g of unsalted butter (I use stork)
50g of granulated sugar
125g of soft brown sugar
150g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
a pinch of salt
1 egg
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
I then add either 150g of rasins, 100g of chocolate or like I did last time 80g of dark chocolate and a handful of dried raspberries (which was amazing)
Mix all the dry ingredients together, then melt the butter and add the vanilla to it before mixing that in, then add the egg.
This slightly sloppy mixture is then ready to cook. I normally make 12 cookies out of this mixture. Just dollop 6 blobs each on to two grease proof paper covered baking trays. Leave plenty of space as they tend to spread.
Then pop into a pre heated oven at 180 degrees and cook for between 8-10 minutes. They should just start to change colour when they're ready, cookies are always better under done than over! They want to still be soft in the middle when they've cooled - I guess the trick is to actually let them cool before you eat them!
I think from start to finish I can make and cook these in about 15 minutes and that's with a 3 year old "helping" me! They taste amazing, I've been cooking them most weeks and it's a good use of my vanilla extract when it's ready to be used.
What's your favourite cookie recipe?
Aw crumbs Kev, I'm doing so well on my diet right now that these would be fatal... once cooked they HAVE to be eaten...but I've filed them away for future use. You might like this recipe for my mum's fork biscuits:
ReplyDeleteFork biscuits
5 oz sr flour
4 oz marg or butter
2 oz caster sugar
Flavouring: vanilla,grated lemon or cocoa powder
Cream the butter and sugar, add flavour and work in the flour. Form into balls about golf ball size, flatten using a fork dipped in water, bake at 350 deg for 15-20 mins. Just double up the recipe for even more biscuits!
These sound good and a lot less sugar than mine, I might have to try them. Thanks for the recipe.
DeleteCurse you Kevin, I'm trying to become less rotund for the sake of my knees and you publish this!
ReplyDeleteI too would like to be less rotund but I do love cookies and cake so I guess it's never going to happen!
DeleteRight, this one has provoked me to make your vanilla extract...
ReplyDeletethese cookies were the reason I made the extract. I was making them every week and getting through the stuff at a rate of knots!
DeleteThe biscuits look great, and when you make as many biscuits and cakes as you and the girls do it's a real money saver to use your own extract. It's one thing I've never gotten round to making, I should do I absolutely love vanilla.
ReplyDeleteI think it saves money as I try to bake a couple of times a week so it saves us having to buy cake. It's surprising how cheap making these is when you get ingredients from Lidl, much cheaper than supermarket 4 for a pound ones!
Deletehave you seen the blog pioneer woman? she has a cookie recipe that i use and it never fails. her secret to more chocolatey taste is a spoon of instant coffee.
ReplyDeleteI haven't heard of her but I'll add it to my list of things to watch! Cheers Sol.
DeleteI can vouch for these - the raisin ones you gave us the other day were amazing!
ReplyDeleteCheers Em!
Deleteputting anything in a cookie other than chocolate chips that are allowed to melt into a creamy goodness is sacrilege. sadly I ave been trying to teach this core belief system to my wife for a while now and she never learns. She puts all kinds of foul chunks into her cookies like cranberries, nuts, raisins... it's just sad to see such goodness ruined. She then runs around complaining that she can't eat all these cookies and someone has to help while my son and I just look at her and explain there are no cookies in the house worth eating.
ReplyDeleteThere is only one type of cookie and that is chocolate chip :)
Oh a slice of bread in the container keeps the chocolate chip cookies (the only real cookie) moist too.
DeleteI do these with big chunks of chocolate rather than little chips, only girls eat little chips of chocolate! Sometimes I use dark, white and normal chocolate, sometimes dark chocolate with dried raspberries. I dare you to try these with the dried raspberries and not be converted!
DeleteNo need for the bread in with the cookies (although it's a good tip) in our house as they never last long enough to hard!
I just got around to making what I now refer to as Kev's cookies..definitely a keeper!
ReplyDeleteAmazing! Glad you like them! I can't stop making them. I think it's the vanilla that makes them so nice.
DeleteToday, I went to the beach with my children. I found
ReplyDeletea sea shell and gave it to my 4 year old daughter and said "You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear." She placed
the shell to her ear and screamed. There was a hermit crab inside and it pinched her
ear. She never wants to go back! LoL I know this is totally
off topic but I had to tell someone!