Chocolate Chip Cookies – Mary Berry’s Baking Bible

I usually bake cakes or biscuits to send with Jon for the friend he stays with in Cambridge but was too busy and tired yesterday after long drive to and from customer site followed by cubs so I thought I’d give it a miss this week. Then this morning I realised from facebook it was his birthday. So quick panic then I did the only thing any sensible person who needed a quick bake would do and reached for Mary Berry’s Baking Bible. Biscuits and cookies are always quick to bake and cool enough to transport quickly as well. Biscuits were mixed, baked, cooled and in box ready to go in about 40mins.

These cookies are beautifully light, soft, sweet and I love them. I much prefer these to Mary’s more impressive looking double chocolate cookies. I doubled the quantities below so there would be some cookies for my boys after school as well and got 35 cookies out of the mix. I’m hoping I can show some restraint and eat no more than 2…

Edited to add Comment from elder teen son where that in his opinion these were the best cookies I’ve made!

Ingredients

• 100g/4oz/1 stick softened butter
• 75g/3oz/ 1/3 cup caster sugar
• 50g/2oz/ 1/3 cup light muscovado sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 large egg
• 150g/5oz/1 cup self raising flour
• 100g/4 oz/ 1/2 cup plain chocolate chips

I’ve done the conversion to American cup measurements so any errors are mine, if anyone tries using the cup measurements please post a comment to let me know how they worked.

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 190 C/Fan 170/ Gas 5
2. Lightly grease 3 baking trays
3. Put butter and sugars into a mixing bowl and beat until evenly blended. Add vanilla extract to beaten egg then slowly add to butter and sugar mix beating well between each addition.
4. Mix in the flour then stir in the chocolate chips.
5. Spoon large teaspoons of mixture onto the prepared baking trays leaving room for the cookies to spread.
6. Bake in pre-heated oven for 8-10 minutes or until golden. Watch carefully as these can go from golden to brown very quickly.
7. Leave cookies to cool on the baking tray for a few minutes (but not too long or they stick) then carefully lift onto a cooling rack with a palette knife.