ENGLISH MUM: never knowingly undercatered

Watch out - here’s yet another post with absolutely nothing to do with moving to Ireland. Nope, nada. Well, I did buy the ingredients here, does that count?

Hope #2 doesn’t read this, but after my recent success of hiding a handful of sultanas (soaked in hot orange juice then chopped finely) in my latest batch of chocolate muffins, I set about expanding my stealth-health (ooh I like that) repertoir by turning my hand to cookies.

My first attempt was to use my usual old cookie mixture (I like this one because you can make loads of dough, bung it in the fridge, then even hubby can spoon boulders onto a baking tray and hey presto - instant silence), whilst surreptitiously adding a small amount of chopped dates. This mixture was from one of my home economics books from school (complete with spelling mistakes (’caster suger’ being the most unforgivable) and has been with me ever since, so no copyright issues there then.

When mixed with small pieces of chopped chocolate I thought the dates were well hidden, but funnily enough it was #1 that noticed them and his comment only just escaped #2’s ears (which would have been a disaster - once he knows I’m tinkering, the usually gaping mouth is clamped firmly shut) by a quickly applied, and somewhat floury, hand across his startled mouth: ‘yes they’re lovely aren’t they, don’t talk with your mouth full darling, there’s a good boy’.

All went well until - disaster! Turning the cookies out I burned one of my fingers and - shock horror! - my new, beautiful white nail. Actually, the damage was not too drastic and there’s just a little sunken hole in the middle of my nail, so undeterred (must happen all the time to Nigella) I pressed on. Not a bad result, but they were a bit hard - okay when first out of the oven but by the time they were cold you needed better teeth than I’ve got to break through. Back to the chopping board then (see what I did there?).

Couple of batches later and I’m onto a winner. I hereby proudly present my recipe. Give it a go. Oh and by the way I know it’s very verbose (one of my Mum’s words there I think), but I hate it when people put stuff in recipes and don’t explain why. It’s very annoying:

4oz butter
4oz granulated sugar (for crunch)
4oz muscovado sugar (nice toffee flavour)
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract (don’t know why, always seems to be in cookie recipes)
7oz self raising flour (started with 8 but makes the mix a bit dry)
100g white chocolate, chopped into big lumps
2oz almonds and 2oz dates (or raisins), whizzed in food mixer so they’re undetectable
2oz porridge oats (healthy eh?)

Anyhoo, cream the butter and the two sorts of sugars in your fabulously large and shiny stainless steel food processor (oh, not got one? Obviously not as fantastic a cook as me then, ha). Then add the egg and the vanilla. No, I don’t know why. It smells nice though. Stir in the flour and the chopped up chocolate. I started off using plain, but white goes really nice and gooey, although doesn’t mask the dates quite as well. I whizzed the dates and almonds until they were quite fine then added them and the oats into the mixture. It does get a bit hard to mix, so beef up those pecs at the same time. Cookery tips and fitness too - what a blinder! Blob spoonfuls onto a baking tray (I got 3 lines of 3 cookies on my tray - they do spread a bit but not too drastically). This mix is quite dry and tough, so don’t shape them or anything, they just melt into nice big fat yummy cookies. Oh, at 180 degrees/gas mark..em..don’t know, for about 10 - 12 mins. Don’t overcook them, they need to be chewy in the middle. Then feed to offspring, whilst silently congratulating yourself on your deviousness.