Sunday, April 7, 2013

Chocolate Chip Cookies and a revamp

See what my lovely girl has done to my website.  I love it!  I had tired of the old design but being rather timid with technology has been a bit of an issue when it came to revamping the blog.  Sometimes I wish you could keep the old posts on the old template and revert to the new design from "this point forward".  But you can't so I hope you like the new design.



Chocolate chip cookies

I seem to have lost my baking mojo.   This happens, I suppose, when there are just two of you and you wonder who is going to eat all that cake you are going to bake (and the answer is usually me!).  So I’ve been drifting around aimlessly looking at one recipe or another hoping something caught my eye.  And it did. 

These may not be chocolate chip cookies as you know them – soft, chewy and chocka with chocolate – and I admit I was tempted to double the quantity of chocolate bits (and go ahead, you are welcome to).  But I quite liked that these biscuits showed some signs of restraint.  They baked crisp and you get to taste more of the actual biscuit, and there is the odd chocolate chip if you are lucky! 

I’d be happy to make these again as a good alternative to the more indulgent version.




Chocolate chip cookies


225g (1/2lb) self-raising flour
a pinch of salt
150g (5oz) butter, diced
100g (4oz) caster sugar
50g (2oz) dark or milk chocolate bits
1 egg, beaten

Sift the flour and salt into a bowl.  Add the diced butter and rub in until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.  Stir in the sugar and the chocolate pieces.  Mix in the beaten egg and bring the dough together into a ball.  Knead lightly on a floured surface until smooth.  Roll into a ball or log shape, cover with cling film and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Heat oven to 180°C (350°F).  Roll out the dough fairly thinly on a lightly floured surface and cut into rounds with a 5cm (2 inch) biscuit cutter. 

Place the biscuits on a lined baking tray, leaving a space between each to allow for spreading.  Prick the biscuits with a fork and bake for 10 to 12 minutes, until golden.

Remove from the oven and leave on the tray for a few minutes, before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.


Recipe slightly adapted from a very old Marks & Spencer* cookbook.


*Marks & Spencer is a department store in the UK.

2 comments:

  1. Lesley, the new look is great - very fresh looking. It's always nice to have a bit of a re-vamp every so often. I've been thinking it's time to change my blog header right now to something possibly a little more autumnal.

    Baking when there are only two of you is always a challenge, isn't it? Especially if you don't want to end up the size of a house. I've taken to baking things that I can freeze in portion sized quantities, as I don't always have the willpower to say no to it if it's sitting in the tin. Your cookies look beautifully crisp and I like that they were a little restrained.

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  2. Love the new look Lesley :) And these cookies sound delicious, I like them crisp rather than chewy, I think it is having been brought up with biscuits rather than cookies.

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