Accept Cookies? (Yes. Yes! YES!)

Cookies, three ways

Yes, I've been watching too much MasterChef, so shoot me.

I love this recipe because it's easy, the ingredients list isn't too long, and they turn out fine without resting the dough (who has the patience for that?) It's also easy to adapt and make variations of, so it's hard to get bored of.

First: The Skillet Cookie

If you don't have a suitable skillet, see the notes below 👇

Ingredients

• 85g soft butter
• 100g each of soft brown sugar and white sugar
• 1 egg
• Pinch salt
• Drop of vanilla extract
• ¼tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1tbsp cornflour
• 120g plain flour
• Dark chocolate, cut into rough chunks (eyeball it)
• A sprinkle of coarse salt to go on top
  

Method

Turn on your oven (175C), run it a nice warm bath by candlelight, and play it some smooth jazz or something.

Prep your Receptacle (possibly a skillet, who knows?). Grease it. Line it. I don't know what you do with your pans, I'm not the pan police.

1. Beat the ever-loving crap out of the butter and sugars until they go pale and fluffy. I use a stand mixer, because a) I'm a lazy swine and b) I love my mixer, don't judge me.
2. Add your egg and keep beating. If your arm is aching, take a moment to pause and write a short note to Santa Claus asking the fat, judgemental sod to put a stand mixer in your stocking.
3. Add your extract, salt, bicarb, and cornflour, and then beat some more. If your arm hurts, conjur up a mental image of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, and reflect on your life choices vis a vis, not buying a stand mixer.
4. This is where I take over from the mixer. I beat in the flour and then fold in the dark chocolate. If you're a mixer-less peasant, rest assured the end is in sight. If your arms ache so badly you're actually crying, I hope you adjusted the amount of salt.
5. Scrape this into aforementioned Receptacle, and squodge it to the edges. Dot a few more choccy chunks into the dough, and sprinkle with a bit of coarse salt.
6. Bake this mothersucker for about twenty minutes. Let it sit in the pan for a few minutes afterwards, to cool and set.
7. Eat it while it's fresh from the oven and still warm, otherwise, what's the point?

Notes, suggestions, etc:

Balls to a skillet, if you don't have a suitable one, a brownie pan is actually fine. I used one, and nothing happened. Nobody is policing this shit. It's your kitchen; go wild. Do whatever you want. I lined it with greaseproof baking paper to make it easy to get the cookie out at the end. It's a non-stop party in my house.

The dough seems too wet when I make this, it's almost more like a very thick cake batter than a dough. Worry not! It'll come out good.

It makes a cookie that is lightly crispy at the edge, and soft and chewy through the middle. Perfect!

It divides well between four people who don't mind feeling slightly sick.
Top it with a bit of ice cream. Sprinkles. M&Ms. Drizzle of caramel. Nuts. Whatever you've got. This is a favourite movie snack in our house. Or you can just enjoy it on it's own. The combo of dark chocolate and salt is delicious enough to stand on its own.

Dark chocolate is good for baking, which is one reason I like this recipe. If you're not overly keen on it, it's just chunks scattered through the cookie so it's not overwhelming.

If you're using cheap cooking chocolate, that's probably also fine. If you want to use nice milk chocolate, that has a higher sugar content and is liable to burn. Chop it into chunks and pop them in the freezer ahead of time. Get them out right before you fold them in to the mixture (they thaw fast).

Sometimes I use golden caster sugar instead of white, because why not? Dark soft brown sugar may also work beautifully, or muscovado. I'll try it and get back to you. You could probably just use one type of sugar, but let's not get too crazy.

Second: Slutty Salted Caramel Cookies

You know those big, slightly gooey cookies? This is a failsafe recipe for those.

As long as you don't overbeat (difficult to do) or overbake (actually not that difficult so take care with that) you literally can't get it wrong.

Use the same recipe as above, with the following tweaks:

• Swap out the vanilla for some salted caramel flavouring. Just a hint is all you need.

🎶 All you need's a hint! (da da da da daaaa!)

(This is optional; you can keep the vanilla and go for regular or white chocolate chips if you're not a fan of salted caramel. There are several variations listed below. The singing, however, is non-optional.)

• Swap out the chocolate for some that has a caramel centre. It will need to be frozen beforehand. I chop some roughly right before I fold it in, and then dot the tops with more bits.

• Increase the amount of flour by 50g (bringing it to 170g)

• I use a little ice cream scoop with the fancy lever handle. It makes for big, round (stop it) uniformish cookies. It also makes a very satisfying schick-schick sound, which a tablespoon just doesn't do.

• They are going to spread, so leave a good gap. Around 5 cm or so should do it. Don't skimp on the extra bits of chocolate dotted into the tops!

• Bake at 175C for about 8 minutes, and then peek on them. They should look a bit underdone. Not wet on top anymore, and only the very beginnings of colour at the bottom around the edges.

• They might have puffed up slightly in the oven; give the sheet a light slamming on the countertop (I've got a marble work surface protector thingy, but if you haven't you might want to be careful which counter you bang on.)

• Leave them on the baking sheet for a few minutes at least, and then transfer to a cooling rack if you've got one. If not, transfer to belly 😋

Suggested variations:

• White chocolate, always a classic
• White chocolate and raspberry (we like the freeze dried raspberry crumbles thingies)
• M&Ms (the mini ones work quite well)
• Reese's peanut butter cups
• Broken pretzels and milk chocolate chips
• Chocolate chips & nuts (pecans, walnuts, or hazelnuts, chopped)
• Fudge pieces - try with a hit of coffee flavour, nuts, dried cranberries, or peanut butter
• Cherry Bakewell delights - swap the flavouring for almond extract; add almond flakes & dried cherries; drizzle with almond icing once cooled (icing sugar, almond extract & water) and finish with half a glace cherry.
• Chocolate dipped (for chocolate maniacs: melt some chocolate, dab the underside of the baked, cooled cookie on to it, and let it set upside down on the cooling rack).
• Oat and raisin (ha ha only joking)

BIG NOTE:

Do not overbake! Get to know your oven intimately. Is it fan assisted? If baked even a couple of minutes too long, these cookies will go quite hard once cooled. This means you'll need to dip them in a cup of tea (oh noooo) or eat them while they're fresh and warm (OH NOOOOOO).

Third: Triple Decker, Triple Orgasm Brownies

1. Grab your brownie pan, and I mean grab it, either a) like you're very excited to be doing this, or b) in a lightly sensual manner. For reasons of hygiene, do not lick it.
2. The second version works better for this in my opinion, but you do you, boo.
3. Press it into the grabbed pan; do this with as much enthusiasm as possible. Make sure it's reasonably even. Again, refrain from licking.
4. Add a layer of your preferred chocolate or biscuit. Chocolate buttons or Oreos work well. Marshmallow fluff gives a good smoresy result. Go crazy. Pilchards and Tabasco. Apple scented conditioner. Pickled onions. Devilled eggs. Truffle oil. The world is your oyster. Oysters! (Shucking optional.)
5. Pour some brownie batter over the lot, tap-tap on the counter so it's nice and even, then bake for about 30mins. (I'll post my brownie recipe asap.)
6. Once again, let it cool in the pan. If you try to get it out too early, it'll just fall apart and you'll end up standing around the warm tin with your family, eating handfuls of it and snarling like the base animals you are become.

Bonus fourth way:

Use the skillet version as a cheesecake base! I'll be posting the cheesecake recipe soon.

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Thank you for reading 😁

Let me know if you give this a try. Did you rest your cookie dough, or nah?