Spring is here and it’s Fairtrade fortnight. I always bake fresh cookies on the morning of a course. My students love them, and people wonder how on earth I manage it all. Well the secret to these cookies is that I have the mixture ready in a jar and all I have to do is add an egg and some butter and some leftover sourdough starter from the previous weeks course. For me these taste really extra delicious because the ingredients are the most ethical I can buy, the eggs are my own chickens, the butter British, the cocoa powder is Fairtrade and the chocolate…well that has to be the The Grenada Chocolate Company because I was there just a few weeks ago meeting the farmers on the cooperative that grow the beans and make the chocolate that is shipped over by sail boat. It really is the most delicious chocolate I’ve ever eaten…and the fairest of them all.
So here is the secret to making home baked cookies in a jiffy.
Makes 24
Prep time 10 minutes
Cooking time 10 minutes
Suitable for freezing Yes
220g Doves Farm Organic self-raising flour
Pinch of salt
120g dark brown Fairtrade sugar
130g British caster sugar
45g Fairtrade organic cocoa powder
60g roughly chopped walnuts
150g chopped dark chocolate ( I use The Grenada Chocolate Company)
120g soft British butter
50g of unrefreshed sourdough starter
Method:
1 Sift the flour into a bowl. Add the salt.
2 In another bowl, mix the dark brown sugar and the caster sugar together. Make sure it is well-mixed – this stops the brown sugar from clumping.
3 Layer the flour, cocoa powder and sugar into an 1-litre jar with an airtight seal. Add the walnuts and chocolate on top and close well. You can hand-write a label with step 4 as the instructions.
4 To make the cookies, preheat the oven to 175C/347F/gas mark 4. Tip the contents of the jar into a mixing bowl or food processor. Add the butter and the egg and sourdough starter then mix for 2–3 minutes, until the ingredients are well-blended.
5 Using your hands, roll the batter into walnut-size pieces and pop them on to a lightly greased baking sheet.
6 Bake for 10–12 minutes. Remove the tray from the oven and leave the cookies for a few minutes to allow the chocolate to set a little before transferring them to a wire wrack to cool completely.
Other ideas
• Replace the chopped chocolate with raisins for a fruity, chewy finish to the cookies.
• Substitute milk or white chocolate for the dark chocolate.
• For a festive touch, add a 1/4 teaspoon of extra cardamom powder and use white chocolate drops at Christmas time.