Making cookies is such a satisfying thing to do! They take virtually no time or effort to make, fill the house with delicious smells while they are cooking and provide you with a biscuit tin full of tasty goodies for the whole family for however long they last!

The recipe below is a killer basic cookie recipe that works every single time! They are not healthy, but you can kid yourself for a spell that they might be as you add in your chosen fruit and nut combo! Subsitute the chocolate/fruit/nut mix to whatever you are in the mood for or whatever you have lingering in your store cupboard! Raisin, milk chocolate and hazelnut; dried cherries, dark chocolate and macadamia nut; dried blueberry, white chocolate and walnuts or my personal favourite, dried cranberry, white chocolate and pecans.

If you are allergic to nuts, just leave them out and substitute the pecan syrup for maple syrup instead!  If you are not a fan of dried fruits then you can leave them out and just increase your chocolate and nut ratios to compensate so you still have a cookie that jampacked full of tasty nuggets!

What I would say is try to use a good quality chocolate as cheap chocolate will melt away into the cookie, and trust me what you would prefer is for there to be discernable chunks of chocolate to bite into.

This recipe makes somewhere between 20-30 cookies depending on how big you make them, but I would keep them small as possible as no matter how much you chill the mixture before rolling and baking, they will spread.  When this happens, you can either keep the presentation all rustic and just break the cookies off in random shapes, or if you are a bit OCD about things then while they are still warm out of the oven use a cookie cutter to dig into the cookie mixture to make a more perfect cookie shape.  Wait until they have cooled and set a bit and then ease off the baking sheet using a pallet knife.

Ingredients:

• 140g plain white flour
• 75g rolled oats (the rougher the oats the better!)
• 125g soft unsalted butter (leave out of the fridge for a couple of hours or give it a quick 10/20 second blast in a microwave oven if you are in a hurry!)
• 1/2tsp baking powder
• 1/2tsp salt
• 75g muscovado sugar
• 100 golden granulated caster sugar
• 2tbsp of pecan or maple syrup
• 1 egg
• 1/2tsp of good quality vanilla extract (not essence if you can at all avoid it)
• 100g of your chosen dried fruit(s)
• 75g of your chosen nuts, roughly chopped (not too fine though)
• 150g of your chosen chocolate drops

Method:

• Measure the flour, baking powder, salt and oats into a bowl.
• Into another bowl, put the butters and sugars, including the syrup, and beat until creamy and then add in the egg and vanilla.
• Add the bowl of dry ingredients to the bowl of wet ingredients and beat together.
• Fold in your chocolate, fruit and nuts.
• Place the cookie dough mixture in the fridge to chill, approximately 20 minutes for a good chill.
• Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 140 degs celsius and line a baking tray with parchment.
• When the oven is ready and the cookie mixture chilled, roll a desert spoon amount of the cookie mixture into a ball, place on the baking parchment and push down gently in the middle – do not flatten the cookie all the way down as remember it will spread during baking so the flatter you lay it out before baking the more the cookie will spread and become thin and greasy.
• Cook in batches for about 10-15 minutes a piece or until they are a golden brown in the middle.
• When cook, leave them to cool for about another 10 minutes until they have set slightly and are easy to move without breaking.
• Store in an air tight container in some greaseproof paper.  They will happily keep in there for a week or more – unless they all get eating up before then!

And….Enjoy!