Posted: February 22, 2012 | Author: kerrycooks | Filed under: Baking | Tags: baking, chocolate, chocolate chip, cook, cookie, cookies, dessert, food, Pretzel |

I’ve become a little bit obsessed with chocolate pretzels lately. I reviewed this M&S version, made these cookies, and I’ve been fantasizing about these chocolate pretzel cupcakes and chocolate chip pretzel bars a little too much, frankly!
I googled ‘chocolate cookies’ (does anyone else find themselves using google to search for recipes even though they have stacks and stacks of cookbooks on their shelves? Sometimes I even find and make recipes that I have in my cookbooks!) and this Nigella recipe for totally chocolate cookies popped up. Perfect! I jigged with the quantities a bit, taking out some of the chocolate chips and replacing them with broken up pretzels!
- 100g dark or plain chocolate, melted in the microwave
- 150g flour
- 30g cocoa, sieved
- 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 125g soft butter
- 75g light brown sugar
- 50g white sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 egg
- 150g dark chocolate chips (I used plain chocolate cut into large chunks)
- 200g broken up pretzels. I broke them up by hand and used Tesco pretzels, the M&S ones are very nice too!
You’ll need to preheat your oven to 150 degrees / gas mark 5 if you’re planning on baking the cookies right away.

First, cream the soft butter with the light brown and caster sugar.

Add vanilla extract, the egg, chocolate chunks, pretzel bits and melted chocolate.

Then sift in your plain flour and cocoa powder and also add the bicarb of soda and salt.

It should all come together in a fairly stiff dough. At this point, you can use a spoon or your hands to pinch off walnut-sized pieces of the dough, roll into a rough ball and then pop onto a baking tray. Or if you prefer to eat some or all of the cookies later, turn the dough out onto some clingfilm, and mould it into a log shape (or something similar!). Then you can cover with clingfilm and leave in the fridge or freezer until you’re ready to cook. When you are, just use a sharp serrated knife to slice off cookies from the log.
Cook for 10-15 minutes at 150 degrees/gas mark 5. Check them after about 7-8 minutes, and I always rotate cookies from the top and middle shelves of my oven so that none of them get too browned.

Enjoy!
x Kerry
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Posted: December 15, 2011 | Author: kerrycooks | Filed under: Just for fun | Tags: chocolate chip, chocolate chip cookie, Christmas, cookie dough, Rainbow cookie |

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Posted: October 19, 2011 | Author: kerrycooks | Filed under: Baking | Tags: baking, chocolate chip, chocolate chip cookie, cookie, cookie dough, no recipe |
While I was ill I really needed some freshly baked cookies. Not shop-bought biscuits, definitely homemade ones. So I scrounged around in the cupboard for ingredients and found butter, flour and a few chocolate chips. But no eggs. Most cookie recipes have at least one. So I decided to wing it with no eggs and use a splash of milk instead.
Now I know that making cookies by winging it instead of following a recipe is maybe kind of scary, and its not something I’d do if I was making cookies that had to turn out right. But if you’re an experienced baker then its really easy to do!
I started with about half a pack of soft butter, and added the same amount (what looked like the same amount!) of caster sugar – I mixed them up with some vanilla bean extract. Yum.

Next I added a generous splash of milk, a tsp each of bicarb and baking powder and plain flour. Enough until it started to look like cookie dough.
And then a bit more, for safety.

I decided to make two types of cookies, chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin so I divided my batter up at this stage.

and added oats, raisins and a dash of cinnamon to one.
and chocolate chips to the other. I splodged onto a baking tray and cooked for about 15 minutes at around 160 degrees and voila – amazing smelling, comforting home-baked cookies.

I wasn’t able to get a picture of the oatmeal and raisin ones because I ate them so quickly – they were amazing!!! I made them on a whim as its not normally the kind of cookie that would appeal to me but the homemade version was fantastic. Chewy, thick, oaty and delicious. The chocolate chip cookies spread more, probably because the oats in the other cookies helped to keep them together – but they still tasted great, especially the next day.
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Posted: August 29, 2011 | Author: kerrycooks | Filed under: Baking, Homemade | Tags: Blueberry, breakfast, Buttermilk, chocolate chip, cooking, flour, home, Pancake |
Its a good thing that this monday is a bank holiday as that means you’ve hopefully had a delightful lie-in and NOW you can make a delicious brunch of blueberry pancakes!

(If you’re reading this at 5pm, you can still have these pancakes for brunch. Oh yes. Its always time for brunch).
Even though these are called buttermilk blueberry pancakes, you can easily substitute natural yoghurt and a dash of milk for the buttermilk so you probably have all of the ingredients for these pancakes around at home! And if you don’t have blueberries (I always do because I love them), you could easily substitute those for something else too. Banana pancakes, strawberry pancakes and peach pancakes would all be fantastic, as would chocolate chip pancakes or even plain vanilla pancakes!
This was the inspiration for my recipe although I made a few tweaks. Here’s my version, which will serve 2 people generously (or one person greedily)-
- 110g plain flour
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp bicarb of soda
- 1tbsp caster sugar
- 200ml buttermilk (or 200ml natural yoghurt with a splash of milk)
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 50ml milk
- 1 tbsp melted butter
- 200g blueberries (or other fruit)
- dash cinnamon
First, get out your biggest saucepan and put it on the hob ready to cook the pancakes once they’re ready (but don’t turn it on just yet!).
Making the pancakes is incredibly easy – whisk up your wet ingredients (buttermilk/yoghurt, egg, melted butter, vanilla extract, milk) until they come together in a pale liquid. I did taste the mix at this point to see if it was delicious yet.
It wasn’t.


Now, in another bowl, sieve the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, bicarb, cinnamon) together.


Combine the wet and dry ingredients and give things a little mix until everythings incorporated.

Then add the blueberries – yum! NOW the batter tastes good.
If you don’t want pancakes quite yet (are you insane) you can keep the batter in the fridge for a few days. For example, you could make a batch on friday evening and then have pancakes for breakfast on saturday and sunday.
I want pancakes NOW.

Turn the heat up and get some butter sizzling. Don’t be stingy, pancakes need butter!

Dollop your batter into the pan (the heat should be about medium at this point). I have a very large saucepan and could fit three medium pancakes in. If you wanted more uniform pancakes, you could use a cup measure or ice cream scoop and use a spoon to guide the batter into a more circular shape as it hits the pan.
Once you start to see bubbles on the top of your pancakes, its time to flip them!

Flippity flip! As you can see my flipping didn’t exactly come off perfectly, but don’t worry. They’ll still taste awesome.
Then its time to eat them!

I served mine sprinkled with sugar and lemon and more blueberries (I had no maple syrup but that would’ve been nice too!).

Going…..
Gone!
Make these today, you won’t regret it!
Whats your favourite brunch food?
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Posted: August 22, 2011 | Author: kerrycooks | Filed under: Baking, Cute stuff | Tags: Annie, baking, cake, chocolate chip, chocolate chip cookie, chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes, cookie, cookie dough, cooking, cupcake, cupcakes, dessert, food, home, yum |

Thanks to you all for the positive response I got when I posted the picture of my chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes on Thursday. They are without doubt the best (cutest and most professional looking) cupcakes I’ve ever made – they even won me a prize!
They were also delicious – here’s how you make them! I originally saw the recipe for these cupcakes over at Annie’s Eats. My version below makes 12-16 cupcakes rather than the original 24, and also adds a couple of pretty vital instructions the original recipe leaves out.
The recipe is a slightly odd mixture of g and cups as I converted it from american, but it really is still very easy – just use the same size mug to measure out all the cup measures (or use a cup measure!) and you’ll be fine.
Here’s what you’ll need! Normally I would get put off my recipes with 3 different sets of ingredients – but don’t, they’re actually very easy to make.
For the cupcakes:
- 170g unsalted butter, at room temperature
- just under 1 cups light brown sugar, packed
- 2 large eggs
- 1.3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp. baking powder
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- half a cup milk
- 2 tsp. vanilla extract
- half cup chocolate chips
For the filling:
- 2 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperatur
- 3 tbsp. light brown sugar, packed
- .5 cup plus 1 tbsp. all-purpose flour
- 100g sweetened condensed milk
- ½ tsp. vanilla extract
- .5 cup cup mini semisweet chocolate chips
For the frosting:
- 170g unsalted butter, at room temperature
- .3 cup light brown sugar, packed
- 1.6 cups confectioners’ sugar
- 0.5 cup all-purpose flour
- pinch salt
- 1.5 tbsp. milk
- 2 tsp. vanilla extract

First, preheat the oven to around 160 degrees and then whiz up your very soft butter with your light brown sugar. A promising start!

I made the chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes with Emma as she made red velvet whoopie pies for her Cake Eaters Anonymous entry.

Next, add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each one with the mixer. At this stage, also add the vanilla extract and chocolate chips. When you add the chocolate chips, be sure to coat them in a couple of tablespoons of flour first (this ensures that they don’t sink to the bottom of the cupcake. Then, add the rest of the flour, baking powder and bicarb and milk. Beat well. I suspected that the batter was extremely delicious and I tested it to make sure – it was extremely delicious!
Slide the batter into your cupcake cases – filling no more than just over half high. I found that my version intended to make 12 cupcakes made more like 16 so you may have a few spare! Pop them into the oven, remembering to turn them at least once so they brown evenly, and start to test for doneness after around 15 minutes.

Next up, make the delicious cookie dough batter to go INSIDE your cupcakes! I know, what fun.
WARNING – this stuff is addictive and once you know how to make it, there’s no going back. First, combine the soft butter and sugar and then add the chocolate chips and condensed milk and vanilla.
Apply some of the mixture to face and then put into the fridge for a while to harden slightly.

At this point my cupcakes had finished cooking and were cooling on their racks. Once they are completely cool, its time to cut out their centres!
I must apologise about my terrible pictures from here on in – we lost the light

Using a sharp knife, cut a cone shaped slice of cake out of the cupcake ready to receive the cookie dough. Eat the spare cake.
Then using a teaspoon, dollop as much cookie dough as will humanly fit into the cavity. Lovely. Smooth down with the teaspoon.

One last thing to do – make the frosting. This is a pretty standard frosting recipe but the addition of the brown sugar and chocolate chips sprinkled on top gives it a lovely cookie flavour. It also has flour in it which was a first for me, but you couldn’t tell from the taste of the finished frosting at all.
First, beat the butter and brown sugar before adding the icing sugar.
It goes everywhere. Oh well.
Next, add in the flour and a pinch of salt and then the milk and vanilla extract. At this point it will come together into a creamy loveliness.

Fill your piping bag with frosting and have at the cupcakes! I used the wilton 1m tip and was very pleased with how they looked.

Lovely! Once I’d finished piping them, we sprinkled chocolate chips and then a mini chocolate cookie (a mini maryland cookie to be exact which they sell in multipacks at the supermarket) to each one.
I learned a valuable lesson here – don’t add a mini cookie until the *second* you’re going to serve the cupcake as otherwise the cookie will go soggy.

Yum yum yum. Make these soon!!

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Posted: August 8, 2011 | Author: kerrycooks | Filed under: Baking, Homemade | Tags: baking, banana, banana bread, cake, chocolate, chocolate chip, food, walnut |
Recently I had a couple of occasions for which I needed easy, crowd-pleasing cakes. Banana bread is that cake. Like rainbows, kitten cats and puppy dogs, everyone loves banana bread.
And banana bread can be made even better with the addition of some dark chocolate chips for a healthy-yet-indulgent treat.
This cake is so adaptable too – I made it again without the walnuts for someone who couldn’t eat walnuts, and I can’t stop thinking about how great it would be with chopped toffee instead of chocolate chips.
And it goes without saying that its moist and delicious.

Here’s what you need to make it! The original recipe is here
- 100g chocolate chips (its nice with dark or plain or white would be good too, or half dark/half white)
- 100g chopped walnuts (or any other nut you desire, or omit them if you like)
- 3 very ripe bananas – they do need to be very ripe so if you know when you’re going to make this cake, buy the banana’s about a week ahead to give them time to ripen. Also, did you know that you can unpeel and freeze ripe bananas and then use them (for smoothies or THIS CAKE!) whenever you want?
- 2 eggs
- 50g butter
- 250g plain flour
- 200g caster sugar
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp bicarb of soda
- 1tbsp vanilla extract
Before you start work, line your loaf tin with some parchment paper so that it will be super easy to lift out and cool when its done. It also makes it look pretty!

Preheat the oven to 16o degrees and get cooking! First, soften the butter and then add the sugar and mix well. Now add the eggs and vanilla extract

Next, mash up your three bananas (a potato masher works well, if your banana’s are a little less ripe than you’d like then add a splash of orange juice) and add them to the butter-sugar-eggs mixture. You will now have a luminously yellow mixture!

In a second bowl, weigh out the flour, bicarb and baking powder, and add the chopped chocolate and walnuts into the same bowl (coating them in flour means that they won’t sink to the bottom of the cake). Then add the lovely dry ingredients to the lovely wet ingredients and bam, CAKE BATTER.
Lovely luminous yellow banana-y batter.

Mix it up until everythings incorporated. If you’re making two banana cakes at once, you’ll need to deploy some superhuman upper arm strength here.

Deposit the yellow batter into your tin and sprinkle over some sugar. I am a big fan of the crunchy sugar crust – I used vanilla sugar the second time I made this cake (and probably put about 3 tablespoons of sugar on the cake!) and it was great.
Demerera sugar would be fab too.

Bake for about 60-70 minutes in the middle of the oven until the cake is completely cooked through. Even though its a moist banana cake, you should be able to insert a toothpick or knife and have it come out without batter on when its ready.

The second best thing about this cake is the amazing banana scented fug that spreads through your house as its baking.
The best thing is how it tastes.
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