Creative Cookies

This is my first of hopefully many 'interactive' blogs.  

I love the thought of a recipe being a flexible idea rather than written in stone and always have.  Some recipes lend themselves to this idea more than others and cookies are a great place to start, especially with children involved!
So the idea for this one is to take my Double Chocolate Cookie recipe and, keeping the basic ingredients the same, open it up to different additions and flavours.  It's a great thing to do for a children's birthday party, although I would weigh out the butter, sugar and flour first and have in bowls.  Also then have available lots of different possible additions, for example; nuts, chocolate chunks (white, milk and dark), dried fruit, orange or lemon zest, peanut butter, coconut...etc.  It's also good to have a few kinds of sugar so they can have the choice with that too!


I had a lovely cookie-making afternoon with three enthusiastic and inspiring girls, Megan, Hannah and Lucy and of course our two little monkeys Jack and Archie...thank you Nadine for giving up her kitchen!  Here are the results....

Megan and Hannah's White Chocolate and Cranberry Cookies

  

Ingredients

110g Spreadable Butter

100g Caster Sugar

100g Light Muscavado Sugar

175-225g Self-Raising Flour

1 Large Egg

1 tbsp Golden Syrup

1 tspn Vanilla Extract

150g White Chocolate, chopped into big chunks

A few handfuls of dried cranberries

• Pre-heat the oven to 160C (fan).
• In a bowl cream the sugar and the butter together with a wooden spoon.
• Beat in the egg, syrup and vanilla extract.
• Add the flour and mix in until a stiff dough is formed (start with 175g and add more if needed)
• You could now add the white chocolate chunks and cranberries as they are but the girls decided to melt half of the white chocolate and keep half in chunks.  They stirred the chocolate chunks and cranberry pieces into the dough then swirled through the melted chocolate.  The cookies did spread a bit in the oven so they decided to add a bit more flour next time.
• Spoon the dough onto a lined baking sheet and bake for 12-15 minutes until puffed and firming around the edges.

Lucy's Fruit and Chocolate Cookies

Ingredients

110g Spreadable Butter

100g Light Muscovado Sugar

100g Caster Sugar

1 Large Egg

175-225g Self-Raising Flour

1 tspn Vanilla Extract

1 tablespoon Cocoa

8 Dried Apricots, chopped

60g Sultanas

100g Mixture of White and Milk Chocolate Chunks

• Pre-heat the oven to 160C (fan).
• Follow the same method as above to make the basic dough.  Then add the cocoa.
• Mix through the chocolate and dried fruits then spoon the dough onto a lined baking sheet.
• Bake in the pre-heated oven until puffed and firming around the edges. 

Jack's Pecan and Chocolate Cookies

(supervised to prevent too much chocolate disappearing into his mouth)

Ingredients

110g Spreadable Butter

200g Caster Sugar

1 Large Egg

175-225g Self-Raising Flour

1 tspn Vanilla Extract

2 Handfuls of Pecan Nuts, roughly chopped

2 Chocolate Flakes, roughly chopped

A handful of Dark Chocolate Drops

• Pre-heat the oven to 160C (fan)
• Follow the same method as above to make the basic dough.
• Mix through the pecan nuts, chopped flake and chocolate drops.
• Spoon the dough onto a lined baking sheet and bake for 12-15 minutes until puffed and firming around the edges.