Hey, I know it’s only Tuesday but I think you’ll agree with me that it’s already time to get the big guns out to cope with the rest of this week. So far these past couple of days, I’ve had neighbours complain about the roots of the bamboo in my garden popping out their patio slabs, 4 seemingly endless conversations with our internet provider about why our connection keeps cutting off and having to deal with a school bully. It feels like it should be at least Friday. I needed chocolate chip cookies. I demanded chocolate chip cookies, hell, my sanity demanded chocolate chip cookies. Alas, there was no one around to make them for me, so I made my own.

I’ve used a recipe described by Deb from Smitten Kitchen in an April post, and Ashley from Not Without Salt earlier. I love both blogs and no recipe ever tried from either has let me down so far. Sure shot delicious, these cookies are basically out of this world, melt and crumble in your mouth out of this world. With 30-minute worth of work – uh huh, guaranteed – you too could be sinking your teeth into gooey, crumbly, crunchy cookies and feeling all better about the rest of the week ahead.

There’s one thing I changed about the original recipe. It had very much to do with the practicalities of not being able to find one type of sugar listed – UK, why you gotta be so simple when it comes to ingredients?! I wanna try turbinado sugar, whatever that is – and less to do with my near constant compulsion to improvise. I replaced this with a combination of light brown and granulated sugar. In fact, experimenting with the type of sugar yielded two different shapes of cookies, so bear this in mind when substituting. My first batch contained 30g light brown sugar and 185g granulated sugar – the cookies were great, a bit on the larger, spread out, dry side. My second batch – in today’s photos – contained 70g granulated sugar and 140g brown sugar. They came out chunky and just the perfect size for dunking into milk. You decide which way to go forward – either way, they’ll be gone pretty quickly.

So, you’ll need:
115g unsalted butter, at room temperature
70g granulated sugar
140g light muscovado sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
220g plain white flour
225g dark chocolate, cut into chips
Sea salt flakes, for sprinkling on top

Preheat oven at 180C. Line a baking sheet with baking paper.
Cream butter with sugars into the bowl of a mixer, until light, fluffy and well combined.
Beat in egg, vanilla extract and baking soda; incorporate well.
Add flour and salt and mix to combine.
Add chocolate and mix.
(Yeap, this is it. 4 easy peasy steps between you and world’s best cookies. Seriously.)

Use an ice-cream scoop if you have one to place tall blobs / mounds of cookie dough on the baking sheet. Cookie dough makes about 22 cookies – divide for baking in 2 or 3 batches. Sprinkle sea salt flakes on top.
Bake for 11 – 12 minutes. Remove to a cooling rack. Repeat with remaining dough.

Eat. Thank me later.