A few notes on the last few days;

The weather is a little more than just a little schizophrenic, which is fine, but it confuses my mood.

It was communion season, the first communion in our family. The emphasis seemed more on chocolate than religion.

Our family was struck down by the plague, perhaps because of the previous point. As a result, my energy levels are that of a dead fly.

So. Yeah. I feel the need for something familiar and delicious. Welcome back 70’s cookbook. I found a recipe for oaty chocolate chip cookies. Let it be said, I have a very poor success rate with chocolate chip cookies. They pretend to be super easy to make, visions of a loving mother making them with a flock of attractive children. None of the such. For the record, children are a jinx in the kitchen, but that aside, even without little people, my cookies often fail. Sigh.

Now these ones I thought would be more reliable with the oat component. Kind of. They look appalling but in their defense they don’t taste too bad. Good work 70’s cookbook.

I halved the recipe and came out with ten biscuits.

Oven temperature 180 Celsius

Chocolate            75g (I used white and dark)

Butter                  50g

Sugar                    50g (I used a mix of caster and light muscavado)

Egg                        1

Vanilla extract    1 teaspoon

Plain flour            40g

Porridge oats        20g

Preheat the oven and line two baking trays with baking parchment. I feel like I should pad this recipe out because there really isn’t anything to it.

Chop up the chocolate into smallish chips. Mine were about <1cm.

It’s better to be using soft butter but whatever the state of your butter weigh it out and pop it in a mixing bowl. Add in the sugar, as I said, use a mix of caster and light muscavado. It doesn’t matter too much the relative proportions. The muscavado is mostly for a caramely taste. Beat together till ‘light and fluffy’. This is a perennial fallacy of the cookbook world. This buttery sugar never gets fluffy. It might get smoothish but never fluffy so don’t be aiming for that.

Crack in the egg and measure in the vanilla. Beat again.

Add in the flour, oats and chocolate. Stir well to combine. Get yourself two teaspoons and scoop up some mixture in one and scrape it off, onto the baking tray, using the second spoon. Make sure to leave plenty of space between these beasties. Fierce spready.

Put them into the oven. I turned mine after 8mins because my oven is uneven but all in all they should take about 12mins. If they start to brown too quickly turn down the oven by 10 degrees.

Once cooked, remove the trays from the oven and leave the cookies alone for at least 3mins. Then carefully lift them off using a palette knife or the like. Bizarrely, they taste better when cooled.