thought fourteen: cookies

Now, I love baking. I might not be amazing at it, but I do really enjoy it. It's funny because when I lived at home I wouldn't set foot in the kitchen but now I have my own I love it! I don't bake a lot because my husband thinks I'll just eat too much (he's probably right there)

I have made many cupcakes, pavlovas, cakes and desserts but now I have finally tried cookies.

It all started when a lady came up to me at church and said "So what are you doing for the auction of talents?" I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about so she explained that church was trying to raise some money by auctioning peoples talents.

Talent. I'm not sure I have a load of useful talents. I suggested that I could bake something but I had no idea what. Next Sunday I came to church and noticed that my name was on the list for baking "an assortment of homemade cookies". Well, I'd never made them before! What on earth was I going to do!

I searched through my recipe books and found a page on shortbread that I thought looked amazing. I gave them a test run a few days early and it was a complete disaster. My cute little mocha shortbreads had melted into one mound of bitter, buttery mess.

Crisis. I needed to make cookies by Saturday (this was now Thursday evening) and I had no idea what to do!

Then I found an amazing recipe for

Chocolate Chunk and Raspberry Cookies.

Ingredients:
125g softened butter
3/4 cup light brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 cup plain flour
1/4 cup self-raising flour
1/3 cup cocoa
1/2 tsp baking soda
90g dark eating chocolate chopped coarsely
125g frozen raspberries

Method:
1   Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line baking trays with baking paper.
2  Beat butter, sugar, egg and extract in a small bowl with electric mixer until combined. Stir in sifted flours, cocoa and soda, in two batches, then stir in chocolate and raspberries.
3   Drop tablespoons of mixture about 5cm apart onto trays, flatten slightly. Bake cookies about 12 minutes. Stand cookies on trays 5mins before transferring to wire rack to cool.

prep + cook time 35mins makes 24