DOUBLE chocolate chip cookies

I just love when I find a recipe for cookies that is always successful, easy, a favourite with (almost) everyone, but above everything else – delicious.

In this Rachel Allen recipe book the Double Chocolate Chip cookies is exactly that. An absolute gem. A firm favourite.

She might not be writing recipe books anymore but I really like her recipes. The recipes are straightforward and I usually have the ingredients.  On top of that she typically has something interesting like ‘meal planning’, ‘storing’, ‘freezing’, ‘store cupboard’ et cetera, in the beginning or back of the books which can be very handy!

So in this book – Everyday Kitchen – I found this gem of a recipe.  Double Chocolate Chip cookies – yummy!

According to Wikipedia the inventor of the Chocolate Chip Cookie was a woman called Ruth Graves Wakefield. She worked as a dietician during the 1920’s and with her husband, Kenneth, they bought a tourist lodge (the Toll House Inn) in 1930 in the town of Whitman, Massachusetts in Plymouth County, America.  Historically passengers had paid toll here, changed horses and ate home-cooked meals.  The Wakefields opened the Toll House Inn and Ruth cooked all the food and desserts for which she became famous!  She invented chocolate chip cookies around 1938 deliberately because she was always serving a butterscotch nut cookie and wanted to try something different.  So this chocolate chip cookie became the Toll House cookie.  Eventually she gave Nestlé the right to use her cookie recipe and the Toll House name.  Hopefully they gave her some free chocolate!

Here is Rachel Allen’s recipe.

 Double Chocolate Chip Cookie (20 large cookies)

225g butter, softened

325g caster sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

225g plain flour

75g cocoa powder

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

¼ tsp salt

175g dark chocolate (55-70% cocoa solids), chopped into small pieces or dark chocolate chips. (white or milk chocolate chips also work)

• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius (350 F, Gas mark 4).  Line three baking sheets with baking parchment.
• Place the butter in a large bowl and beat until very soft.
• Add the sugar and beat until mixture is pale and fluffy. 
• Crack in one egg at a time, beating between each addition, and then add the vanilla extract.
• Sift in the flour, cocoa powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt, then add the chocolate pieces/chips and fold in to combine.
• With wet hands, form the dough into balls each the size of a golf ball (or use two soup spoons to scoop up and shape the dough).
• Arrange on the baking sheets, placing 6 – 7 balls of dough on each sheet and leaving space for the cookies to spread.
• Bake for 10-14 minutes or until the cookies look slightly cracked on top.
• Take out of the oven and allow cooling for a few minutes, and then placing on a wire rack to cool down completely.
• Delicious!  Enjoy.