Food with JP passion: Sweet & Salty Chocolate Cookies
By JP Kennedy
John Paul Kennedy is a self-taught cook and an avid fan of collecting cookery books with a passion for good old-fashioned home cooking. his passion for proper family cooking stems from his TWO Grandmothers who were both excellent cooks, one of whom was a trained chef. JP promises to bring us plenty of family-inspired recipes and tasty treats while showing us how to get the basics right.
These cookies are a new recipe from Nigella Lawson’s fabulous new cookbook, Cook, Eat, Repeat! I’ve always found over the past number of years Nigella’s baking recipes to be really excellent and these cookies certainly don’t disappoint.
While a number of you may have decided to give up sweet treats for lent I think this year we should still allow ourselves a treat at least once a week.
The recipe is for two large cookies but I have increased the measurements to give you at least 8-10 good sized cookies that you can store in your cookie jar to accompany a nice cup of tea.
The cookies are deeply chocolatey, sweet without being too sweet and sprinkled with sea salt flakes to give a nice salty hit at the end. I love the combination of salt and sweet hence why I am in love with these cookies right now.
Ingredients:
- 200g plain flour
- 40g cocoa powder
- ½ teaspoons baking powder
- ½ teaspoons of bicarb
- ½ teaspoon fine sea salt
- 200g soft unsalted butter
- 100g castor sugar
- 60g soft dark brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon of good vanilla extract
- 100g dark chocolate chips
- ½ teaspoon of sea salt flakes (to sprinkle on top)
Method:
1. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees / 160 fan and line a baking tray with baking parchment paper. You don’t need to line the tray if it’s non stick.
2. Stir the flour, cocoa, baking powder, bicarb and fine sea salt together in a bowl to combine them.
3. In a larger bowl beat together the butter, both sugars and the vanilla – I use my mixer for this.
4. Add a spoonful of the dry ingredients to the creamed butter and sugar and beat in with a wooden spoon then place the rest of the dry ingredients in about 3 batches and combine well. If you try to do it all at once you will end up with cocoa and flour all over you! Also gradually add in your chocolate chips with the dry ingredients.
5. Beat until you have a dark, sticky dough that clumps together
6. Then divide into 8 separate pieces of dough – You can weight them if you want to be precise and roll each one between your hands to form a Pattie and sprinkle some sea salt flakes on the top of each one.
7. Space them evenly apart onto a baking tray as they will spread when baking and pop into the oven to cook for 12 minutes. Once the cookies have cracked and spread they are cooked.
8. They will feel very soft and almost uncooked when they come out of the oven. Leave to stand on the baking tray for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool for another 15 minutes. Pop the kettle on and enjoy!
I always like to have a stash of cookies or something sweet to enjoy with an evening cup of tea. These cookies will last for up to a week in an airtight container, not that I expect they will last that long as they are so delicious.
The other thing I love about making cookies is it’s merely a bit of measuring, combining ingredients and then they only take a short time in the oven and you have delicious freshly homemade cookies to enjoy!
Always so much better than any shop bought version! Happy Baking All. Next week I’ve a delicious black pudding meatball recipe to share with you all!
Contact JP On:
Twitter: @JPKCooking
Email: JPKCooking@gmail.com
Instagram: jpkennedy.kennedy
