CHUNKY CHOCOLATE AND ALMOND COOKIES

Chocolate Cookies are great and homemade ones are even better so this weekend I decided to make some whilst I waited for the forecasted thunder storms to arrive. Chocolate cookies are also great for bakers to make when they are skint like I was this weekend as you only need a few ingredients that you should have knocking around in your kitchen. I even had some leftover flaked almonds in my pantry too I decided to add them to my cookie dough for a bit of texture and they made a great companion to the chocolate chunks in the cookies.

If you don't have any almonds lying around then don't worry. These cookies are just as delightful without them, I just find the toasted crunch of the flaked nuts gives them a little something extra. Try and use the best quality chocolate and cocoa powder you can afford as well. The better your ingredients, the better your cookies are going to be.

The recipe below will get you roughly 12 cookies. You will probably need two baking trays to do this too unless you have a massive oven. If you only have one tray you can bake the cookies in batches. Make sure you let your cookies cool before moving them off the baking trays after you've removed them from the oven. They will be soft but will firm up quite quickly;

Chocolate And Almond Cookies

120g Soft Butter

75g Golden Caster Sugar

75g Light Brown Sugar

1 Large Egg

1 Tsp Vanilla Extract

1/2 Tsp Bicarbonate Of Soda

150g Dark Chocolate Chunks

130g Plain Flour

50g Cocoa Powder

50g Flaked Almonds

1. Start by lining two large baking trays with grease proof paper and turning your oven up to 180 degrees (160 fan)
2. Tip the butter, caster sugar and light brown sugar into a bowl and beat until light and fluffy before adding in the egg and vanilla extract and beating until well combined.
3. Add in the bicarbonate of soda, chocolate chunks, flour, cocoa powder and 40g of the almonds and fold everything thought until you see no more streaks of flour and a cookie dough has formed.
4. Scoop 1 heaped tbsp of the cookie dough on the lined baking tray and repeat, spacing the dough balls about 2 inches apart. You should be able to get 6 on each of the trays. Flatten the tops of the dough balls slightly, sprinkle some of the remaining almonds on top of each ball and then pop the trays into the centre of the oven to bake for 11 minutes.

Remove the baking trays from the oven and leave the cookies to cool and firm up slightly before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely. You should have a delicious baked chocolate cookie smell wafting around your kitchen making it so hard for you to resist getting stuck into your cookies straight away but you must wait for them to firm up. Once it's time, tuck into these deliciously chewy cookies with the delightful crunch of the almonds alongside the obligatory mug of tea and listen to the rain pelt down against the windows all wrapped up in a blanket. That for me, is what weekends were made for!