Hey friends, I hope you are well!

I thought this week I’d share a new recipe with you!

I’ve got a set of specific recipes I always go to and with the prices for pre made baked goods going up and quality (sometimes) going down I’ve finally realised that I genuinely prefer my own baking over shop bought alternatives and its great having a cupboard full of fun ingredients that if the need arises I can just grab and bake myself into a happy place.

Personally I find baking to be rather soothing as something I really struggle with in life is anxiety (I get so upset and spiral if I think I’ve done something wrong or let people down) and I find one of the things that helps me calm down is baking, specifically baking biscuits or cookies. I’ve shared one or two of my recipes before and kinda thought why not post more of them and maybe make like a mini digital recipe book and share the ones that help my mental health the most (on the off chance other people find them helpful).

To be fair I don’t bake particularly complex things.

So, I figured I’d start with one of my favourites a chunky honey, oat and cranberry cookie decorated with lashings of dark chocolate that even has a chocolate base!

These cookies do contain egg so they aren’t vegan (but egg substitutes are available). I’m a vegetarian and I don’t like the taste of cows milk so I use oat/plant based instead and I’ve got a free ranging duck and a chicken for fresh eggs (I try to contribute as little as possible to intensive animal farming).

So with that in mind lets bake some awesome cookies…

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Makes 13-ish decent sized delicious chunky cookies.

For the biscuit –

• 225g unsalted butter (proper solid butter not spread and straight from the fridge)
• 55g Caster Sugar,
• 55g Light brown soft sugar
• 1 Large Egg
• 275g plain flour
• ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tbsp organic Rowse honey
• 100g dried cranberries
• 1 tsp almond flavouring
• 90g plain chocolate, cut into chunks
• 170-200g dark chocolate (or milk if preferred)

Top top! Use an ice cream scoop to portion the dough, it make great chunky cookies!

The method –

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C, gas mark 4; line 2 large baking trays with baking parchment. 

Chop the cold butter into cubes and lightly combine with both types of sugar using an electric whisk on a low setting.

Add the flour, bicarb, almond flavouring, honey and the egg and whisk to combine.

Mix in the cranberries and oats with a large spoon until distributed evenly through the dough and then rest the mix in the fridge for an hour.

Use an ice cream scoop to create chunky cookies (or use a spoon that works too!) and spread them across the baking trays.

Bake for 10 minutes until golden at the edges, remove from the over but leave to cool on the trays for 5 minutes, then transfer to a rack to cool completely.

Decoration –

Once totally cool, lay the cookies back on the baking paper and melt 170-200g dark chocolate. Put a good spoonful of melted chocolate on the baking paper and then place each cookie on top for a decadent chocolate base. To use up the extra chocolate use a fork to flick it back and forth over the tops of each cookie.

After about an hour the chocolate will be set and you can peel them from the paper and enjoy them with a cup of tea!

They’ll store in an airtight container for 3 days!

Overall I’m always overjoyed by how yummy these cookies are.

These are so, so good and don’t take too much effort…the hardest bit is leaving them while the chocolate sets!  I really quite enjoyed writing this, I love baking and I really hope you like this recipe (let me know if you give it a try). 

As always thank you so much for reading my friends, and have a lovely week!