These little beauties are the ultimate sweet fix – chewy
caramel, melted chocolate, and crisp crumbly biscuit. Washed down with a
generous cuppa, they are the perfect solution to rainy days and getting the
blues.
Ingredients
225g golden caster sugar
150g butter
1 egg, plus 1 extra egg yolk
A splash of vanilla essence
500g plain flour
Half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
3 Mars Bars
Makes about 24.
First melt the butter in the microwave, and then mix well
with the sugar. Add the first egg, then carefully separate the other one and
add just the yolk. Splash in about a teaspoon of vanilla essence. Beat the
mixture well with a spoon – it should start looking paler and creamier as you
beat in the egg.
Next, add the plain flour and bicarb and mix really well
– don’t worry, to start with it will look like there’s way too much of the dry
ingredients, but it will gradually come together. You should end up with a
fairly dry dough that’s still squidgy.
Start preheating the oven to 170˚C (or 160˚C
if you have a fan oven). Cut the Mars Bars crossways into slices about 2cm
wide, and then cut those slices in half – you don’t really have to be this
exact, I just find that you don’t want the chunks to be too big, because
they’ll make the cookies fall apart, and you don’t want them too small,
otherwise the taste will sort of disappear. Mix the chunks into the dough.
Grease a couple of large baking trays, and then start
forming the cookie dough into blobs about the size of the circle you make when
you put the tips of your thumb and forefinger together. Put them a couple of
inches apart on the baking tray – they will spread out as they cook, and you
don’t want them to start sticking together.
Pop them in the oven for about 20 minutes, then allow
them to cool for a couple of minutes on the tray before you take them off.
Scoff them quickly while they’re warm and chewy, with a big mug of tea –
rooibos (naturally decaffeinated, vanilla-scented tea) is particularly scrummy
with these, as the notes of vanilla complement each other beautifully.
