Jake's Cookies

These little gems are so delicious you’d probably never guess where the original recipe came from - but in fact I was introduced to them by my nine-month-old nephew Jacob (oh, alright then – his mum, Teresa) and they come from a baby-weaning book! You’d never know it though because they’re sweet, crunchy and very very moreish, not to mention that since they were originally concocted for little ‘uns, they are lower in sugar and fat than many other cookie recipes.

Ingredients
80g plain flour
60g oats (dry porridge oats are fine)
¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
90g margarine
75g caster sugar
1 tbsp golden syrup
1 tsp vanilla essence
A good handful of sultanas, or any other dried fruit that you fancy

Makes 20 cookies.

Preheat the oven to 180˚C (160˚C fan). Weigh out all the ingredients except for the dried fruit, and mix them together really well – if you’ve got an electric mixer or a hand-mixer, that will speed things up, but otherwise you can just knuckle down with a good old wooden spoon. Carry on mixing until all the ingredients combine in a soft dough – it might look a bit dry to start with, but don’t be tempted to add more liquid, because it should all come together. Once you’ve got the dough, add the dried fruit and mix that in by hand.

Next, prepare a couple of baking trays – grease them with a bit of margarine and then line them with greaseproof paper (the margarine is just to help the paper stick to the tray – useful if you have a fan oven which will blow the paper around!). Form the dough into blobs about the size of a 50p and arrange them on the trays – don’t be tempted to squeeze as many in as you can, because they spread quite a lot when they cook and you don’t want them sticking together. Once they’re arranged, flatten each one slightly with the back of a spoon.

Bake for about 15 minutes, for chewy cookies, or 18-20 for crispy ones.