My sister Clare makes the best cookies I’ve ever had – they are divine! The right balance of chewy, a little crunchy but still soft, they’re sooooo good! She has finally shared her recipe with me and is allowing me to share it here too.

The base recipe is super easy and yields around 10 large cookies and you can play around with flavours and fillings pretty easily too.

I added hazelnuts and milk chocolate to mine and they were incredible.

*See the very bottom of this post for how to make Nutella-stuffed cookies 😉

The dough freezes very well and also keeps well in the fridge up to 4 days if you roll it into a sausage shape and wrap with clingfilm then you can slice and bake as you want.

So, here’s the goods..

You’ll need:

• kitchen scales
• measuring spoons
• baking parchment paper (not grease-proof – it’s not the same thing and will stick)
• baking tray or two if baking them all at once
• large mixing bowl
• wooden spoon/silicon spatula
• electric hand mixer or whisk

 

Ingredients:

• 80g soft brown sugar
• 80g caster sugar
• 150g butter – melted
• 1 egg
• ½ tsp vanilla extract
• 225g self raising flour
• 1 tsp baking soda (aka bread soda/bicarbonate of soda)
• ½ tsp salt
• 250g of chocolate chips/nuts/dried fruit/sweets of your choice

 

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180°C and prepare your baking tray/s by lining with baking parchment paper.
2. Whisk the brown and caster sugars together with the melted butter.
3. Add the egg and vanilla extract and whisk until well combined.
4. Sieve in the flour, baking soda and salt and mix well to combine.
5. Add in whatever nuts or chocolate or other and stir well through the cookie dough.
6. If you are not using all the dough or are making these ahead of time, lay out some clingfilm and shape the dough into a sausage shape then wrap and place into the fridge or freezer for future use – just slice and bake as you need.
7. Put 1 heaped tbsp blobs of cookie dough on to a baking tray (or 1½cm thick slices if fridged or frozen), leaving plenty of space between as they will spread – I find 6 per large baking tray is the maximum.
8. Bake for 12 minutes – be sure to time this.
9. When you remove them from the oven they will be very soft – carefully slide the baking paper from the tray with the cookies on it onto a worktop, or use a metal spatula to carefully place them onto a wire rack to cool for a few minutes.

Here are a couple of variations Clare has made…

Smarties topping with Nutella centre

*made by rolling Nutella in some clingfilm, freezing for an hour or 2, then slicing, placing some cookie dough on the tray then a slice of the frozen Nutella, then topping and sealing around the edge with more cookie dough.

Milk chocolate chunks with Nutella centre

Now, go forth and experiment with these bad boys and enjoy!

Emma (and Clare) x