Another Dan Lepard recipe from the Guardian. Find it here.

These are very handsome, tasty cookies. Not the usual massive monsters I make. Dan L says “place round, teaspoon-sized balls” on the baking sheets, but I just got teaspoon fulls and rolled them between my palms to the size of a small walnut in an effort to achieve some sort of regularity of size.

The dominant flavour here is from muscovado sugar and black treacle (or molasses – TBH, I’m not sure I could tell the two apart if I ate a spoonful of each in a blind test), along with a slight saltiness from the peanuts. The recipe also includes some lemon zest, which Dan L says “brightens the flavour on first bite”, but I find it also stays on the palette pleasantly.

I’m not sure about the inclusion of a tablespoon of cocoa though. He says it helps “to push the aftertaste towards chocolate”, but is it really necessary? The flavours of unrefined sugar and peanut are quite dominant,  and cocoa is arguably overcomplicating it. Plus, if I want my cookies to taste of chocolate, I’ll make chocolate cookies. But hey, that’s just me. Oh, and I knocked back the sugar a bit too.

My fellow baking enthusiast at work, Ms Hannah Mearns, lent me The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook by Tarek Malouf.

I made these. They were delicious. I ordered the book from Amazon. Home Delivery Network were crap… and I’ve still not got it! I want to make some more goodies from it. Among other things, I want to make both its chocolate cupcake and its chocolate muffin recipes, to indulge in the never-ending debate about what distinguishes the two.

Anyway, these cookies used a nifty technique where you make the dough, roll it into a sausage, then freeze the sausage for an hour. You then cut rounds and bake ‘em. It gives the finished biscuit a nice, almost production-liney regularity. Kinda.

Pecan and white choc is a quality combo, but this basic recipe is probably fairly versatile, so I’ll try some other variations… when HDN delivery my flippin’ Amazon order. Hmph.

I love this recipe, it really deals with a cookie craving and you can adapt it so easily. The original recipe was in the Guardian Weekend (January 20 2007) with some other delicious cakes and tarts by Gill Meller. I like adding rolled oats and raisins but this batch was milk and dark chocolate. I’m about to make some oaty ones with dates (dates in cakes and biscuits are always a winner).

The Recipe:

125g unsalted butter
100g unrefined granulated sugar
75g light muscovado sugar
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
150g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
100g extras – chinks of chocolate, oats, nuts, dried fruit, preserved/crystalised ginger, pinenuts etc….

Oven at 190 degrees, line two baking sheets with baking parchment.
Melt the butter, put the two sugars (I vary the sugars too depending on what I have) in a bowl, pour over the butter and beat well. Break in the egg and add the vanilla, beat to combine. Sift in the flour, bp and salt then stir in your chosen extras.
Dot heaped dessertspoonfuls on the trays leaving plenty of space between. Bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and leave to harden on the tray for a few minutes before lifting up the baking parchment and transferring to a wire rack.

Then, put the kettle on.