Bittersweet Easter Basket

There is nothing bitter about this basket of goodness.  Take a look:

Chocolate cookies, Lindt Bunny, grapes, mini-eggs and Lindt eggs. Mmmm.

Again my photography skills have let the baking down – the chocolate cookies here are really divine; melty and oh so chocolatey. The weird thing about them is they have marmalade in.  As with all biscuits, they are actually done before they look done – the ones on the middle were soft and the edge ones were hard.  Which way you like it might be a matter of preference, but for me the gooey meltiness of the “just-done” biscuit is divine.

I’d really want to make these again and try to get the whole batch gooey because the extreme chocolatyness was overwhelmingly tasty.

Ingredients: 110g margarine, 50g soft brown sugar, 110g plain chocolate (melted into the mixture), 110g milk chocolate (chunks), 2 tablespoons marmalade, 175g self-raising flour.

Who made it: Anna did everything.

Recipe: Baking, Making and Sharing, by Susan Over, page 14.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

The first rule of Cake Club is: you must not talk about Cake Club.

The second rule of Cake Club is: you must not talk about Cake Club.

Can you guess the third?  Yes, it’s that you must bring cakes.

Mega Chocolate Chip Cookies

When my turn for Cake Club came around, I looked for a simple yet tasty choice.  And here it is in all its glory: behold for yourself, the mighty cookies.

Cookies. With Chocolate Chips.

This is a trivial recipe courtesy of “Mary Berry’s Ultimate Cake Book”, consisting only of egg, flour, butter, and chocolate chips.  But what more is there to life, when it comes down to it?  I mean really?

Well OK, there is vanilla essence and a pinch of salt, but that’s just nitpicking.  You simply mix them all up, dollop onto an oven tray and bake for 10-15 minutes; try to take them out before they brown too much.

Taste wise, they are almost identical to the melt-in-your-mouth buttery goodness that we all know from those awesome supermarket cookies; you know, the ones we all trekked all the way to Sainsbury’s for because Somerfield didn’t do them back in the last millennium.  In these more enlightened times, its possible to get such tasty cookes at 4 for a pound at any medium-sized supermarket, which is a hefty mark-up considering I got 17 for less than this.  Additionally, this is a perfect base to make experimental cookie flavours from.  What party wouldn’t benefit from home-made raisin/cranberry/white-chocolate/dark-chocolate/double-chocolate/triple-chocolate… oh I give in, I obviously need some chocolate right now.

Any interesting cookie ideas?

Who made it: This was all Dan.  Anna helped with the eating though.

Recipe: Mary Berry’s Ultimate Cake Book, page 151.