Minstrel cookies

My love of a bargain beat sense and reason once again the other week, when I saw share-size bags of minstrels reduced to just 25p each – what a bargain! Naturally I grabbed a handful.

I could quite happily have just munched my way through them all, but I thought it would be more sensible to use some of them for baking, and having seen lots of cookie recipes that use M&Ms, I thought Minstrels would probably bake into a biscuit equally well.

I decided to tie this in to April’s We Should Cocoa Challenge, set by Choclette of Chocolate Log Blog, which was to combine chocolate and cheese, and used the base recipe for these chocolate chip cookies, which uses cream cheese instead of an egg in the cookie dough.

They turned out really well – more like a normal cookie than the apricot and white chocolate cream cheese cookies I made last year – and stayed really soft and chewy for as long as I could keep the pony’s hands off them.

I would definitely use this recipe again if I have any spare cream cheese waiting to be used!

Minstrel Cookies (recipe adapted from the Busty Baker)

Makes 14

• 85g cream cheese
• 85g butter, melted and cooled
• 1tsp vanilla extract
• 105g light brown sugar
• 135g plain flour
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 150g Minstrels (approximately 1.5 large bags, or 3 regular sized bags)

Beat the cream cheese to soften, then gradually add in the melted butter and vanilla, beating until combined, followed by the sugar (sifted is best to get out any lumps). Sift together the flour, bicarb and salt and fold into the cookie mixture. Divide into 14 roughly equal pieces, then press 4 Minstrels into each. You don’t have to be that precise, you could just mix them into the mixture beforehand but I like all my cookies to have equal amounts of chocolate!

Chill in the fridge for half an hour, then roll each cookie into a ball. Place the balls onto a baking sheet, well spaced out – I did mine in 2 batches. Flatten down a little, then bake at 160 degrees for 15 minutes, or until just starting to turn golden. Leave on the baking sheet for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Homepride chocolate chip cookies – a Random Recipe

This month’s random recipe challenge, set by Dom of Belleau Kitchen, was to pick a random recipe from the 17th book in your collection.

For me, this was ‘Baking with Homepride Flour’, my oldest cookbook.

Now, I have a confession to make – the selection of these chocolate chip cookies wasn’t completely by chance.

Not because I cheated at all, but because I have made the recipe so many times I think the book automatically falls open at that page…

As much as I love chewy, American-style chocolate chip cookies, these will always hold a special place in my heart as I’ve been making them for as long as I’ve been baking.

They’re almost shortbread like in texture, quite crumbly and soft, studded with delicious chunks of chocolate (I double the amount stated in the recipe – it’s better that way, trust me!

I probably wouldn’t have thought about making these old favourites if it hadn’t been for Random Recipes, so thank you Dom!

Homepride chocolate chip cookies (from Baking with Homepride Flour)

Makes 20 cookies

• 50g butter
• 125g caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 1tsp vanilla extract
• 125g plain flour
• 75g self raising flour
• 100g chopped milk chocolate
• 100g chopped white chocolate

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla, then sift in the two flours and fold in with the chopped chocolate. Roll the mixture out into two long sausage shapes, about an inch thick, and wrap in cling film. Chill until ready to use (they freeze well if you don’t want to make them all at once.)

Heat the oven to 220 degrees. Slice each sausage of dough into 10 pieces, then flatten them out on a lined baking tray. Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until just starting to turn golden. Leave on the tray for a couple of minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Peanut butter Nutella swirl cookies (GF)

Pinterest is dangerous.

Ever since I joined, I’ve been overwhelmed by the amount of delicious looking baked goods that appear every time I log in.

Sometimes I pin or repin things and then forget about them, but some I just can’t get out of my head.

These peanut butter Nutella swirl cookies were one of the latter – as soon as I saw them I knew they would be baked soon, and they were.

As well as being pretty tasty, they’re also versatile – I made half the batch using wheat and gluten free flour and you couldn’t tell the difference between those and the ones made with normal flour, perfect if you know anyone with allergies or intolerances that normally would have to miss out.

(PS – If you too are a Pinterest love, you can follow me at www.pinterest.com/natblachford)

Peanut butter Nutella swirl cookies (recipe pinned from Une Gamine Dans La Cuisine)

Makes 35 cookies

• 125g butter
• 50g caster sugar
• 55g light brown sugar
• 200g peanut butter
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 210g plain flour (GF or normal)
• 3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 100g Nutella

Beat together the butter, both sugars and peanut butter until light and creamy. Add the egg and vanilla and beat again, until well combined. Sift in the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt, and fold in until the mixture is just coming together, then gently fold in the nutella (the more you mix it, the less pronounced the swirls will be.)

Use a tablespoon measure to scoop rounded balls out of the mixture, and place spaced out on a baking sheet. Flatten each down with a fork, to create a criss-cross pattern on top. Bake at 180 degrees for about 9 minutes, or until just turning golden. Leave to cook on the sheet for a couple of minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

New York Times chocolate chip cookies

I defy anyone to not like a proper, American style chocolate chip cookie.

Crisp around the edges, chewy in the middle, delicious chocolate chunks – and the smell when they’re baking! Amazing.

In the search for the perfect chocolate chip cookie, I found a lot of reviews claiming that a recipe published in the New York Times was the one.

 

After a bit of searching, I found another blogger who had made them and handily converted some of the quantities from cups to grams – cup measurements are enough to stop me attempting a recipe, so thanks Made with Pink!

I made a few of my own tweaks, making half the dough, using a bit less chocolate and simplifying the measurements – and I can report that they really are the best chocolate chip cookie I’ve ever made!

I’d definitely make them again, and I’d also use the dough as a base recipe for other cookies – it’s worth the 36 hour wait between making the dough and baking the cookies, trust me!

New York Times chocolate chip cookies (adapted from Made With Pink)

Makes 11 cookies

• 105g plain flour
• 15g cornflour
• 105g bread flour or strong white flour
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 140g butter
• 125g light brown sugar
• 100g caster sugar
• 1 medium egg
• 1tsp vanilla extract
• 250g dark chocolate, broken into squares

Cream together the butter and both sugars until light and fluffy, then beat in the egg and vanilla. Sift in the rest of the dry ingredients and fold to combine, then stir in the squares of chocolate. Wrap the ball of dough in cling film and refrigerate for 36 hours (no idea why, but do it!)

When it’s time to bake, take the dough out of the fridge and preheat the oven to 175 degrees. Divide the mixture into balls weighing 75g each, then place on a baking sheet. I put 3 on each sheet to be cautious, and they spread quite a bit so unless you have a really large baking sheet I wouldn’t try to fit more.

Bake for 12 minutes, or until golden around the edges and puffy in the middle. Leave to cool for 10 minutes on the baking sheet before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely (if you can wait that long!)

Apricot and white chocolate cookies – We Should Cocoa

This is a special month in my baking world, as it will be my first attempt at a We Should Cocoa challenge.

We Should Cocoa is alternately hosted by Chele at Chocolate Teapot and Choclette at Chocolate Log Blog, and each month an ingredient is picked to be paired with chocolate.

The July challenge hosted by Chele was apricots, which was a funny coincidence as my first post of the month was an apricot upside down cake (no chocolate included though).

I had planned to use fresh apricots, but when I discovered that 4 apricots cost £2.60, I had to think again and went for dried!

It took me a while to decide what to bake, and several ideas came up including the Moro chocolate apricot tart or some sort of muffins, but I settled on these white chocolate and apricot shortbread cookies.

I was intrigued by the idea of a cookie dough made with cream cheese, and as I had some left over from the Nutella cheesecake squares it seemed perfect.

At first the dough was a bit too sticky to properly roll into balls, and the resulting cookies were a bit mis-shapen and brown around the edges.

For the second batch though the dough had been in the fridge for 20 minutes and I used a bit of flour to roll them, and being actual ball shapes definitely seemed to make a difference to how they cooked.

The cookies were soft, a bit chewy and the white chocolate and apricot worked really well together. I personally liked the first batch which had a bit more crunch, but the friendly pony thought the soft ones were perfect, and is keen for them to be made again.

Thanks to We Should Cocoa for inspiring me to make these!

Apricot and white chocolate cookies (adapted from La Fuji Mama’s recipe)

(Makes approximately 2 dozen cookies)

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 cup caster sugar
• 4oz cream cheese
• 1 cup plain flour
• 1/2 cup chopped white chocolate
• 1/2 cup of chopped dried apricots

Cream together the butter and sugar, then beat in the cream cheese. Stir in the flour, apricots and chocolate until combined. Chill in the fridge if necessary, then roll into balls on a floured surface. Place well spaced out on a baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes at 160 degrees. Leave to cool until firm enough to move to a wire rack, then enjoy!

Chocolate chip cookies: A mission

So, this week I have been on a bit of a mission. To create the perfect, soft, chewy, Millies-style cookies.

I’ve tried to do this before, years ago, with absolutely no success, but for some reason the urge to make them has come back, so that’s what I’ve been doing.

The first recipe I tried was a bit/massive disaster.

First of all, I made it before reading to the end of the recipe where it said ‘chill for 24 hours’. Not impressed! The dough seemed a bit thin, but I assumed that would be sorted with the chilling.

The next day, I baked. I followed the instructions exactly, but came out with pancake thin, stuck to the paper crisps. So then began the experimenting of adding more flour (=a slighty thicker cookie), more flour again (= a weird sort of spongy drop cookie), and more sugar (= back to where I started).

At this point I gave up and let the friendly pony eat the raw dough, which duly made him feel sick.

I’m not quite sure where I went wrong with the first recipe; it could have been some dodgy converting from cups to grams, or the fact that I tried to halve the recipe, or maybe that I used margarine instead of butter… if anyone can offer suggestions, let me know!

I wasn’t going to let a cookie beat me though, oh no. Two days later, and armed with a new recipe, I started again.

This time, they looked better from the start, with a much thicker dough and no need to chill for a day.

They took a bit longer to cook than the recipe suggested, but that could just be down to my terrible oven.

The friendly pony ate a hot one from each tray I cooked, and they went down extremely well at work, so I’m calling them a success!

The friendly pony ate a hot one from each tray I cooked, and they went down extremely well at work, so I’m calling them a success!

Successful Millies-style chocolate chip cookies

I followed the recipe exactly, so you might as well get it from the original source, Lauren’s Recipe Book. Mine took closer to 10 minutes, but were still doughy and delicious!