Jammy thumbprint cookies

These cookies do many things. They are shortbread-like in texture. They have jam, which somehow makes them fancy. They melt ever so slightly around the edges to leave a crunchy rim. I like the things these cookies do.

Ingredients:
260g plain flour
180g butter (room temp)
150g golden caster sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
your favourite jam

Makes about 25 cookies
Calories: 120
Takes 45 minutes to make, 1 hour to cool and 12-15 minutes to bake

Stage one: Cream the butter and sugar. Then add in the egg and vanilla. Finally, add in the dry ingredients until they form a stiff mixture. Put the mixture in a bowl, cover it and put it in the fridge.

Stage two: Preheat the oven to 190C/fan 170C. Line a couple of baking trays with greaseproof paper. Break off chunks of dough and roll it into balls the size of a walnut. Put them on a baking tray and press your finger into each one to form a hole about 1cm deep. Using a teaspoon, scoop in a little bit of jam to fill each hole.

Stage three: Bake for 12-15 minutes.

Chocolate chip cookies

Sorry for the long delay in posting – life has been busy in a wonderful way. I’ve spent time in Cambridge with friends, and been unexpectedly offered a wonderful and exciting job as a research assistant for the next year! Now I get to stop looking at NHS jobs every 10 minutes before leaping into a panicked flurry of typing in case I miss a position that can be up for as little as 5 minutes. I get to stop worrying about what I’m going to do for new work experience this year. I get to stop living in the glum irony that trying to become a clinical psychologist is basically terrible for your mental well-being. Life is excellent. And now I get to thank my employers and work experience organisers through a medium which I find far less socially awkward than my usual rambling “thanks, really, thanks, no seriously, thanks” etc etc. Baking! Tonight I am baking for a large number of ladies in a child psychology department, so clearly chocolate chip cookies are the answer. I used this recipe. It’s good. Life is good. Good things are good.

Ingredients:
200g brown sugar
100g caster sugar
170g butter, room temperatures
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla extract
250g plain flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
200g dark chocolate chips

Makes 36 small cookies, or 18 big cookies
Calories: 120 when making 36; 240 when making 18
Takes 15 minutes to make, 10 minutes to bake

Preheat the oven to 190C/fan170C. Cream the butter with the two sugars. Stir in the eggs and vanilla, then add the flour, salt and baking powder. When everything is evenly combined, stir in the chocolate chips.

Put a sheet of greaseproof paper on a baking tray. Put balls of cookie dough on the paper 8cm apart, 1 tbsp in size for small cookies, 3 tbsp for large cookies. Bake for 10-15 minutes until they’re golden brown and starting to crisp around the edges. Leave to cool four a couple of minutes before transferring them to cooling racks.

Double chocolate cookies

Cooking and baking are totally different skills. I find it really difficult to stick to recipes when I’m cooking, always wanting to add things or change the methods, and I don’t care. As long as you keep tasting as you go it almost doesn’t matter what you do because you can usually save it. Baking I find trickier because all you’ve got is the batter plus extras, and while I love batter you still can’t count on it giving you the end result you want. If you’re adding fruit, is it going to dissolve into a mush in the oven? (And if it does, is there any way of renaming whatever comes out that will make it sound deliberate?) Did I add too much butter? What is another egg really going to do? Which brings me to these cookies, which are the first non-recipe-using baked goods that I am sharing on this blog, and I know it’s wrong to brag but I think they’re great! Crunchy outside, chewy inside, very chocolatey (despite humble cocoa powder beginnings), sweet but not too sweet, with great big chunks of white chocolate with every bite. Yum.

Ingredients:
125g self-raising flour
40g cocoa powder (I use Green & Black’s, which is wonderful)
100g caster sugar
50g dark brown sugar
150g butter, softened
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
80g white chocolate, roughly chopped, or chocolate chips

Makes about 20 medium-sized cookies
Calories: 120
Takes 5-10 minutes to put together, 12-14 minutes to bake

Stage one: Preheat the oven to 190C/fan170C.

Stage two: Cream the butter with the sugars, then add the egg and vanilla extract. Next, add the cocoa powder and beat until the mixture is evenly a dark brown. Mix in the self-raising flour until you can’t see any white bits, and finally add the white chocolate. You will now have a firm batter. As usual, I rejected spooning out the mixture in favour of getting my hands stuck in it. Anyway, put the cookies on a baking tray in balls about a heaped tablespoon in size.

Stage three: Bake for 12-14 minutes. They won’t immediately feel firm to the touch when you take them out of the oven, but if you leave them on the baking tray 5 minutes before sliding them off to cool then they’ll set. I love the contrasting colours of the dark cookie and white chocolate when you bite in.

White chocolate cranberry oat cookies

White chocolate cranberry oat cookies is a mouthful to say, and also to eat. I used smitten kitchen’s recipe as a base, but then changed a few things up and switched from cups to grams. I love putting oats in cookies because it makes me feel healthy when eating cookies. These oats were intended for porridge, which means these cookies are basically porridge, right? I love how chewy these cookies are, and you can really taste the brown sugar. Which I also love. I’m happy. The boiler has been replaced and now I have cookies.

Ingredients:
120g butter at room temperature
1 medium egg
150g dark brown sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
110g plain flour
150g porridge oats
40g dried cranberries
40g white chocolate, chopped

Makes about 15 cookies
Calories: 190
Takes about 20 minutes to make, 10-15 minutes to bake

Stage one: Preheat the oven to 170C. Then beat the butter, egg and sugar until smooth. Now add the baking powder, cinnamon and flour until just mixed. I did this with an electric mixer.

Stage two: Time to leave the electric mixer, because the rest of the ingredients are going to make the mixture very thick. Also, I like to get my hands stuck in it. Maybe you could do it with a spoon if you really wanted to, but the cookies are too thick to dollop so you’ll probably get your hands messy anyway. Anyway, now add in the oats and mix until evenly distributed. Finally, mix in the cranberries and chocolate.

Stage three: Line 2 baking trays with greaseproof paper. Roughly ball the cookies in the palm of your hand and put on baking trays in whatever size you prefer. Mine were the size of about 2 walnuts. I’m sure there’s a better way to describe the size, but all I have in my head is walnuts. Pop in the oven and bake until golden around the edges. This will take 10-15 minutes, depending on how big the cookies are and how crispy you want them. Leave on the tray for 5 minutes before putting on cooling racks.