Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies

These cookies are packed with three types of chocolate, sweetened with good quality vanilla, with a touch of salt for that true addictive quality. Great with a cup of tea or coffee for a mid morning snack (or as a sugar rush when you're late first thing as I often am), it's a struggle to contain yourself to just one.

This recipe makes around 16-20 cookies, depending on your scoop size.

Ingredients:

• 170 g unsalted butter
• 100 g caster sugar
• 200 g light brown/light muscovado sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 250 g plain flour
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 100 g white chocolate
• 100 g milk chocolate
• 100 g dark chocolate

Equipment:

• Large mixing bowl
• Wooden spoon/Spatula
• Measuring cups/scales
• Measuring spoons
• Chopping board & a sharp knife
• Baking trays and parchment
• Cookie scoop if you have one, or a couple of tablespoons
• Cooling rack
• An oven, preheated to 180 C/350 F/Gas 4

(An electric mixer will make your life easier, but if you've got a fairly strong arm a wooden spoon will do just as well)

For anyone without scales, a good weight to volume conversion guide can be found here.

First, chop up all of the chocolate into small chunks. You could use chocolate chips instead to make your life easier, but I like the irregularity of hand chopped pieces, and the way the stray shavings make their way through all of the cookie dough, spreading chocolate through every bite.

Soften the butter in the microwave. Put both of the sugars into a large mixing bowl, then add the butter. Beat together the butter and sugar until they are well combined.

Add the egg, egg yolk and vanilla into the mixture and beat again until everything is well combined.

Now add the flour, bicarb and salt. Mix by hand until the flour is combined and a dough has formed.

Tip in the chocolate chips and mix these in well.

Scoop the cookie dough out onto lined baking sheets, making sure to leave plenty of space between each scoop for spreading.

If you have a (handily stolen from work) cookie scoop, spoon out large dollops onto the sheet. For neater cookies you can shape these into balls with your hands, though it's a bit of a messy job.

Bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes, until they are spread and golden, but not hard; you want them gooey and chewy in the middle.

Remove from the oven, leave to cool for 5 minutes, then move onto a cooling rack to cool completely, (if you can resist).

Eat!

This cookie dough recipe can be easily adapted for any other flavour, simply replace the 300 g chocolate with any other ingredients you fancy. Some of my favourites are:


Dark Chocolate & Ginger - add 2 tsp ground ginger to the dough, use 225 g chopped dark chocolate & 75 g chopped crystallised ginger

Milk Chocolate & Peanut Butter - use 150 g chopped milk chocolate, 150 g crunchy peanut butter

Triple Dark Chocolate Chip - substitute 75 g of the plain flour for cocoa powder, use 300 g of your favourite type of chocolate, chopped

Mayan Chocolate Chip- add 1 tsp ginger, 1/2 tsp cinammon, 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper, zest of one orange, use 300 g of spiced chocolate (such as Green & Black's Maya Gold), chopped