Awesome Triple Chocolate Cookies - Taste Test Approved

On Sunday afternoon, Oliver and I went shopping up in Norwich for a couple of jigsaws. He had been really good ALL day and I treated him to a cookie to eat in the car on the way home.

That was it - he'd had a taste of a real chocolate cookie..... and it was only going to be a matter of time before his request was put in. Oliver doesn't forget anything.

This morning, he was up and playing around the house after finishing his breakfast.

"Cookies ! Can Oliver and Mummy make cookies ?"

Well, we dug out an old recipe from the cupboard and made up a quick batch of these. They were made and ready (and Oliver had eaten one) before 11am !

On picking my rascal up from nursery this evening I found he had informed everyon that he had made chocolate cookies for breakfast. Ah well. He's only had ONE so far... and the rest will be rationed to make them last.

Do be warned. These cookies are delightfully fugdy and gooey and SERIOUSLY chocolatey. Almost brownie like in the centre but with crisp edges.

RECIPE

1 egg

125g salted butter

250g light brown soft sugar

1 tsp vanilla

175g self raising flour

70g cocoa powder

100g white chocolate chips

100g milk chocolate chips

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Add in sieved flour and cocoa and mix to combine. Mix in chocolate chips - you could add nuts too if you like

Roll into walnut size balls and place on prepared baking trays. Putting them on greaseproof paper is ok, but if you have silicone baking mats  / tray liners - my preference is to use the smooth side up.

Put into a 170deg C Fan oven for approx 9 mins. Theese do spread, but not too much. The cookies will end up about 3" diameter. You can get about 9 on a tray and this mix makes approx 24. Of course, you could always make them bigger and cook longer.

Mine were in the oven for 9 minutes. The outsides were crisp and the insides really yummy and squishy. From the outside, they looked disapointingly cakey when I wanted chewy and gooey - but looks sometimes do deceive ! Oliver seemed satisfied with the results. You can see how squidgy they are from the inside and the colour of his teeth. Yeuch !

I think we will be making these again soon.....

When removed from the oven, leave on the tray for a minute or two to cool before transferring to a wire rack until totally cooled. If putting on silicone baking sheets, these need to cool a little longer on the trays as the silicone retains quite a bit of heat.

Sarah-Jane Nash - http://www.siliconemoulds.com/ January, 2011     silicone bakeware moulds

Oliver & Mummy Make Christmas Sugar Cookies

Well - my little Oliver has been a rather poorly little bogwoppit this week. Thankfully, he seems a bit better today and well enough to go to the nursery Christmas party today.

Oliver and I made these sugar cookies last weekend.... Or should I say - I made the dough. He watched it in the mixer. helped to roll it and stamp out the cookies. Mummy put the icing on and Oliver dipped them in sprinkles.

Not bad for a team effort !

They are good and hard and should easily keep in their cellophane bags for about a month. I thought they would make lovely little gifts for Oliver to give to friends and relatives this Christmas. We also made a pile for the nursery staff and his class teacher...which I'll let Oliver take with him today.

I spotted a really neat cookie cutter set online with Williams-Sonoma.com and knew we could have some seriously good fun with it. The only disappointing bit is that they only ship within the USA - so the only way we could get this was via Ebay.

I'm glad we did ! There are three cutters in the set - a snowflake, Christmas bauble and a gingerbread man. All have the facility via a plunger to stamp letters and words into your cookies.

Christmas Sugar cookies

4 cups plain flour
225g butter (salted)
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 egg
vanilla essence - 2 tsp
mixed spice - 3 tsp
water - enough only to combine the dough

Beat sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Add and beat in the egg and vanilla. Combine flour, baking powder and spice with the beaten mixture. You will  need to add a tiny bit of water to make it combine into a pliable dough.

I then split my dough batch into three. In two of the batches, I added some gel sugar paste and a teaspoon more of water and mixed it through.

We rolled out the dough on our new silicone work mat. This is a brand new product to us and I'm totally in love with it.

The work mats are HUGE. 640mm x 450mm - that's 25" long x 18" wide.

The have markings for english / imperial measurements (ie inches) along two sides and metric / cms on the other two sides. The are also marked with various diameter circles for rolling out pastry and icing. I have had super success rolling out fondant on it. I just rubbed a tiny bit of Trex / veg shortening on to the surface and got rolling. Absolutely no extra icing sugar required for rolling. Likewise, it's a dream for rolling pastry and kneading bread.

The silicone is very different to the feel of what our baking tray liners and moulds are. It's kind of stretchy - almost like a wetsuit. It grips beautifully to work surfaces. Do note that it's not meant for cutting on. You will easily cut right through it with a knife. Saying that, I trimmed some strips of fondant on it for my mums cake (see previous blog entry) but did so with great care and using a very old and blunt dinner knife and the lightest of pressure. Worked a dream. Saves my work tops getting claggy after kneading bread dough or rolling pastry. A simple wipe of a cloth and it's ready to fold or roll and put away.

It's marked with cirular rolling guides up to 16" diameter too which is mega handy.

These silicone bakeware work mats / rolling mats will be available from Monday for £7.99 each

Sarah-Jane Nash, http://www.siliconemoulds.com/ - December 2010