(Nearly-)Whatever-You-Want Chocolate Cookies

Spring seems to have finally, finally sprung.

I'm having to adjust to taking pictures with sunlight streaming into my kitchen instead of the beautiful muted light we've had all winter. I went out yesterday without a coat or thick scarf or boots or socks. The woollen throw has been tossed off my bed. The violets are flowering in every nook and cranny of my little garden and the buds on my apple tree are bursting open.

To celebrate, I've made cookies.



About ten years ago, mum bought a simple, magazine-style cookbook from the Australian Women's Weekly series. She spent a year working in Melbourne before I was born and I think she came across the series at that point. We've only ever made one recipe from the book: the chocolate cookies. They've evolved over the years but they're still essentially the same - thick, crispy-on-the-edges, squidgy-middled and wonderfully deep with muscavado and plenty of cocoa powder.

I've made them to say thank you. I've made them for picnics. I've made over a hundred for a catering job. I've made them when friends have come to stay. Mostly, I've made them when I really wanted a chocolate cookie.



Since I first posted about them in 2009 (they were the eighth recipe I posted on here), they've got a little lost in the archives. I wanted to talk about them again, so I thought I'd see what else you could fold through the dough. I usually use pecans with whatever other chocolate I have on hand - usually dark. So I could try a few different things, I split one batch of dough into three: Crystallized Ginger & Dark Chocolate, Double Chocolate & Walnut and Freeze Dried Raspberry & White Chocolate.

I used:
80g dark chocolate
25g crystallized ginger pieces

40g dark chocolate
30g milk chocolate
45g toasted walnuts

100g white chocolate
7g crushed freeze dried raspberries

I haven't tried baking freeze dried raspberries into anything before and sadly it didn't work here - any bits on the outside burned and I wasn't happy with the flavour (so the recipe went from whatever-you-want to nearly-whatever-you-want). Despite that, the ginger variation was great (though I might add a little more ginger next time - I was nervous as this packet seems extremely fiery) and I'm always a massive fan of the nut-chocolate combination.

What combination would you try?



(Nearly-)Whatever-You-Want Chocolate Cookies
(adapted from an Australian Women's Weekly book - I'm not sure which as I can't find the book)

125g unsalted butter
200g soft brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract or paste
185g plain flour
50g cocoa powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp fine sea salt

Mix in:
350g of assorted chocolate, nuts etc

Preheat the oven to 160C/320F. Put the butter into the bowl of a stand mixer and briefly beat to soften it up. Add the sugar, egg and vanilla and beat until smooth. Add the flour, cocoa, bicarbonate, baking powder and salt and mix on the lowest setting to combine. Stir through the mix-ins. Use a couple of teaspoons to create smallish heaps of dough on a lightly greased baking sheet. Place into the oven and bake for 10 minutes (12 if from frozen). Leave to cool on the sheet for 5 minutes then remove to a wire rack.

The dough can be chilled for about 24 hours and frozen for a few months. I freeze formed ready-to-bake cookies on a tray then transfer them to a zippy bag. You can then bake them straight from the freezer whenever you want fresh cookies.

(Makes about 25-27 small cookies)



Three more posts about cookies/biscuits:
2012: Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies
2011: Sesame Wafers
2010: Peanut Butter Biscuits

Pear Pie & Raspberry Caramels

You know how sometimes everything you cook is just a little bit off? Not ruined, not inedible - just not what you'd expected. This week has been like that. Every day I wake up and think that today will be the day when I get my act together.

Maybe tomorrow.

After many experiments and accidents, I don't have a recipe for you this week. Instead, I have two ideas represented by two sets of photos. It seemed a shame to waste them. After writing about the hidden scaffolding of rules and habits behind this blog last week, it seems almost appropriate to break them.

First, I made a pear pie that had a bit of a soggy bottom (I dread to think what Mary Berry would have said).

My mum came to visit last weekend as there was a tiny slit of light in my schedule. The main reason the pastry went wrong was that I had to take the pie out of the oven early or she would have missed her flight home to Switzerland as she refused to leave without tasting it. I've also never made a pie with a pastry base in this ceramic dish - I think a metal one would be better.

You actually don't really need a recipe for this - just use your favourite pastry recipe (I used the one from the Apple and Quince Pie) and fill with chunks of firm but ripe pear. I mixed a tablespoon of brown sugar with half a teaspoon of ground ginger and sprinkled it between each layer of pears. The pears were concordes and were some of the best I've ever tasted.

I also tried to make some freeze-dried raspberry fudge, inspired by some I ate on my trip to Edinburgh a few weeks ago. It was my first attempt at fudge. I appear to have made caramels. Absolutely gorgeous, vanilla-flecked, raspberry-studded, salted caramels.

But as they're not what the recipe was meant to make and I can't test it again today to check, I don't feel comfortable giving you the recipe. I think the pastry gods were trying to tell me something - caramels appear to be an even better place for the raspberries than fudge.

If you can't wait for me to do more testing, you could try finishing a tin of salted butter caramels from David Lebovitz with a handful of crushed freeze-dried raspberries (I stirred some in, too, hence the slightly weird bumps). It's quite different from the recipe I used but I think it would give you a similar taste and texture.

A few related posts:
Banoffee Pies
Ginger Bourbon Pecan Pie
Dusky Caramel and Raspberry Crêpe Cake