So today marks quite a special day in Hindu culture, Raksha Bandhan. It’s a day to celebrate siblings.
Sisters tie a sacred thread on their brothers right hand wrist to wish them health, wealth and happiness in their live. The brothers repay by giving the sisters a gift or money in return and vowing to always be there when their sister needs anything.
This year, it’s the first year EmJay and myself have been settled in our new home so I wanted to do something special for my brothers and make my own sweet snacks to post to them.
I took a look online as I thought from a postal transport perspective, cookies would be the best thing to do, so I ordered some presentation bags from Lakeland and off I went to find some cookie recipes.
One of them had to be chocolate based, who doesn’t love chocolate hey? I adapted a recipe from Sainsbury’s online Jamie Oliver collection, the original recipe can be found here.
The second batch, I wanted something plain and simple and came across a picture on Deena Kakaya’s Instagram feed of some chocolate chip cookies made by her lovely little boy, she kindly sent me his hand written recipe so I used that with some adjustments to make the second batch.
I made a batch of each and allowed them to cool fully and then placed a piece of baking parchment in the bottom of each presentation bag and filled them up.
My adaptation of both the cookies is below:
Double Chocolate chip cookies:
50 g unsalted butter
200 g quality dark chocolate (70%)
1 x 397g tin of condensed milk
25 g ground almonds
2 heaped tsp cocoa
200 g self-raising flour
100g chocolate chips
1 bar of Hershey’s cookies and creme
Method:
- Melt the butter and chocolate in a pan on a low heat until smooth and combined, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat and stir in the condensed milk, followed by the almonds and cocoa.
- Sift in the flour and a pinch of sea salt, mix together, then chill in the fridge for 20 to 30 minutes (no longer). Once cool, but still pliable, smash up the cookies and creme bar then mix it all together, at this point you can put into the fridge or freeze in a log until ready for fresh cookies.
- Preheat the oven to 170ºC/325ºF/gas 3.
- Divide the mixture by either cutting circles through the log around half a cm thick and place on a couple of large baking trays lined with greaseproof paper and top with the chocolate chips.
- Bake for around 12 minutes, or until chewy in the middle and firm at the edges.
- Leave to sit in the tray for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.
My adapted version of Deena’s Little Man’s Cookies:
125g butter, softened
75g golden caster sugar
175g self raising flour
75g semolina
Sprinkles of your choice
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4. Line three baking trays with baking paper.
- Mix together the butter and sugar until creamy, I usually do this in my Kitchenaid.
- Add the rest of the ingredients including a few sprinkles and mix together lightly. You can put these in the fridge/freezer in a log at this point to use later.
- Cut circles of around half a cm or ping pong size balls, place onto a baking tray and then top with more sprinkles if desired
- Bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes until a light golden brown.
- Remove from the oven and leave to stand on the tray for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
Joshi Cooks 