Triple Chocolate and Pecan Cookies

I promised in my last post that I would share my attempt over the holidays to soothe my cravings for Ben's cookies by making these triple chocolate and pecan cookies. They're a bit different from Ben's - I used both dark and white chocolate, and they have walnuts rather than pecans. Thinking about it, I'm fairly sure that Ben's don't have nuts in the actual dough, either. But most of all it's the volume - these are fairly flat, even sunken - whereas Ben's have big domes. They're also a bit too crispy in places - I want some chewiness, and a more brownie-like consistency. I'm going on work on that over the summer. I think one starting point will be Erin Cooks' recipe for Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies. By the time I graduate I want to be able to recreate them perfectly!

I'm much more of a fan of pecans than of walnuts - I find walnuts often have a funny aftertaste. In a similar way I always thought macadamia nuts had a really metallic taste. Pecans almost always hit the spot, though, especially when toasted. The white chocolate chips I used were left over from decorating Mum's Birthday Cake, and I think some 'real' white chocolate would have improved them. They weren't half bad chips - but a lump of Green and Blacks or similarly cocoa-butter rich type. For some reason the supermarkets in town at home only have pretty shoddy white chocolate. Perhaps if we went down into the valley it would be better.

Despite the fact they're not Ben's, they're not quite tall enough, etc etc, they really are quite lovely. The nutty muscovado and the pecans go beautifully and the chocolate melds into the dough, yet you still get pockets of melted chocolate. The pile disappeared really very quickly.



Triple Chocolate and Pecan Cookies
(Inspired by a recipe from Australian Women's Weekly)

100g pecans
125g butter
200g soft brown sugar
1 egg
185g plain flour
50g cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
150g dark chocolate
100g white chocolate

Preheat oven to 180C/350F. Toast the pecans in a dry saucepan or in the oven for 4-5 minutes or until they smell nutty and look slightly darker, then leave them to cool. Beat the butter and sugar together until well combined. Add the egg, then sift in the flour, cocoa, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt and beat just until combined. Chop and stir in the pecans and both types of chocolate. Scoop out balls of dough and place on lined baking sheets, with at least 4cm or so between them. Squish slightly. Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until they look set in the centres. Remove from oven and let cool on the tray for five minutes before removing to a wire rack.

The dough keeps for at least a day in the fridge. I often freeze the balls of dough and then bake from frozen, which takes an additional 1-2 minutes. They keep in the freezer for up to two months.

(Makes 15-20, depending on size)

Ben's Cookies

One of the biggest culinary highlights of Oxford - at least as far as I'm concerned - is Ben's Cookies. They're incredible. You get them from the tiny little hatch shop in the Covered Market, bold in red and white and decorated with the fabulous Quentin Blake's special illustrations for them. (Anybody else grow up with Roald Dahl's books and Quentin's illustrations?) They bake the cookies on site and sell them either by weight and then popped in their infamous paper bags or in tins of six or ten. You can get a glass of milk or filter coffee too. They don't confuse it by adding or baking anything else: it's all about the cookies.

The Covered Market is one of my favourite places in Oxford. It's a little complex of shops, cafes, butchers, grocers, florists, cobblers, milliners, delis, sandwich shops, jewellers, pet shops, everything you can think of, all clustered under the vaulted pink roof of the market. I love the way it has all the individual shops - not like the big supermarkets of today - in their tiny little premises. They actually focus on what they're selling and do it brilliantly - as individuals rather than corporations - which gives it so much character.

Often twinned with Ben's Cookies is Moo-Moo's, which you can see in the photo below. It's a milkshake and smoothie hatch, and sells literally every milkshake flavour you could think of - any cake, sweet, biscuit, cookie etc will be on their menu. I think they have over 200 stable flavours and there's always specials on. In college people tend to either be Ben's or Moo-Moo's fanatics - it's a it of a split camp. Though I'm firmly with Ben, Moo-Moo's definitely have their sweet, sweet charm...

From their little hatch, Ben's sell twelve flavours of cookie. White, Milk and Dark Chocolate Chip. Double chocolate chip (chocolate dough and milk chips). Triple chocolate chip (chocolate dough and white and dark chips). Milk chocolate and Orange. Raisin and Oatmeal. Dark chocolate chip and Ginger. Fruit and Nut with Dark chocolate chips. Dark chocolate chip and Nut. And my favourite, my eternal order, the one some of the assistants give me without asking, the model of these portraits... Double and Nut.


These are not just any cookies. They take melt in the mouth to another level entirely. Always perfectly just undercooked, squidgy, yet crisp on the outside. They're often hot from the oven, the chocolate melted, oozing out. In winter I constantly got freezing fingers from eating the cookie hot out of it's iconic paper bag, getting chocolate all over them and having to lick it off. Often they ooze onto the sides of the bag as you break bits off. Double and Nut won my heart with it's dark, intense chocolate flavour, with plenty of muscovado in the depths, and a nutty overtone in the dough, the dark chocolate lacing it, chunks not feeble chips, and the beautifully toasted walnut on top, finishing a masterpiece.

This week I got an early birthday present - a new digital SLR! So I am now the proud owner of a Sony alpha A350 - and it's pretty damn fabulous. I'm only really starting out on taking my photography seriously - I've got so much to learn - but it's amazing to have the scope for so much improvement and to learn with a real camera rather than my phone or mum's point and shoot! These photos for this post were the first things I took after getting the hang of the camera, and I hope I've done Ben's Cookies justice - I'm pretty happy with the results. Yet I know I'll be looking back in a few weeks thinking I could do so much better now, but then that's the brilliance of learning.

Next post - my attempt to alleviate my withdrawal symptoms from Ben's in the holidays by baking cookies. I can't promise they're like Ben's - still working on that! - but they're pretty lovely and mean I'll finally be writing another recipe...