After trying a few recipe variations with chocolate and cherries, this one came out on top! It has so many ways to adapt it, I think it’s probably pretty much perfect. The one thing I have to stress is when you take the cookies out of the oven, leave them to sit on the baking tray for at least 5/6 mins – don’t touch them – after that, you can use a wide palette knife to gently move them to a wire tray to fully cool. This will be the difference between having a batch of cookies and a batch of cookie pieces!

I used baking parchment on the baking trays to prevent sticking and a heaped teaspoon for sizing them. You will get a decent size cookie from this, bigger than shop bought and a bit smaller than those large Smarties cookies.

The variations are endless here – the original recipe is sweet and delicious. You could try

Crystallised Ginger Stem pieces;

Orange & Dark Chocolate;

Coconut and Lemon

Chocolate Chips;

Banana  & Chocolate Chips;

Oatmeal and Raisin;

One word of warning, if you want to use cherries in syrup, make sure you drain them really well before using. They hold too much liquid otherwise. If you can get them, fresh cherries would be the your first choice and after that, glace cherries will work too.

Ingredients:

• 200g butter, at room temperature
• 55g light muscovado sugar
• 55g golden caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 225g self-raising flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 50g plain chocolate, roughly chopped
• 50g white chocolate, roughly chopped
• 85g natural colour glace cherries, roughly chopped

Method:

Heat oven to 190C/  fan 170C/   gas 5.

Beat the butter, both sugars and egg until smooth. Using a wooden spoon, mix in the flour, chocolates and cherry pieces and 1/2 tsp salt.

Spoon onto non-stick baking sheets in rough blobs. I used a heaped teaspoon. Make sure they are well spaced as the cookies grow substantially as they bake. The raw dough can be frozen. Just think of the possibilities!! Okay no let’s be sensible and think how well prepared you will be to have ready made cookie dough in the freezer to take out when needed 😉

Bake for 12-14 mins until just golden, but still quite pale and soft in the middle. If baking from frozen, give them a few mins more. Cool on the sheets for 5 mins, then lift onto racks with a carefully and leave to cool completely.

That’s it. Simple and the results are delicious cookies of your flavour choice!

Leave your comment below when you make these fantastic cookies.

Bake with love

Soraya x