I love cookies and make a load of them every other week. There are always small – and big children – in my world who need feeding with…cookies of course!
I have been experimenting with a Mary Berry recipe for biscuits that I found online. See here for Mary’s recipe. It’s actually a basic shortbread recipe, ie butter, flour, sugar (no egg) with some add ons. I’ve made my own version, as outlined below.
Ingredients
175g butter, softened
100g raw sugar
75g sweetened condensed milk
175g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
75g semolina
2 tablespoons raw sugar, for rolling
50g milk chocolate chips
Method
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C or 160 degrees C fan forced.
Line 1 large baking tray or 2 smaller trays with baking paper.
I make the dough in a food processor, but you could make it in an electric mixer – but the food processor method is super easy.
Put the butter, sugar, condensed milk, flour and semolina into a food processor and process until the ingredients come together into a soft dough. It’s better to process in a few bursts so that you can make sure you don’t over process.
Place the dough on a floured work surface. Bring the dough together into a ball, and then shape into long sausages about 5cm/2″ diameter for smaller cookies or 8cm/3″ diameter for larger cookies. You need to make two sausages as it’s easier to shape them if they are not too long.
Wrap the sausages in cling film. They will still be quite soft, so you can continue to shape in the cling film, tightening the sausage shape. At this point put in the fridge and rest for at least a couple of hours to make the dough easier to cut into discs. You can leave overnight and the dough freezes really well too!
Remove from the fridge, umwrap, and with a sharp knife, cut into slices – the thickness is up to you. Roll each cookie on both sides in raw sugar, gently pressing the sugar into the dough. Place the cookies onto the baking sheet/sheets, with space in between. They do spread a little, but largely keep their shape.
Once on the trays, you can leave as is, or press chocolate chips individually onto the top of each cookie. It sounds labour intensive but actually doesn’t take that long!
Bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes until golden brown. If you cut your cookies quite thick they may take a couple of minutes longer.
Remove from the oven and leave to cool for at least 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
The Quirk and the Cool 