Recipe: Yummy Squishy-in-the-middle Chocolate Chip Cookies!

When I call these “cookies”, I mean it.

These are not big biscuits. A cookie needs to be a little bit crispy on the outside and squishy in the middle, and much as I like a good ‘maryland cookie’, in my eyes, they aren’t actually cookies. They are biscuits. Good biscuits, yes, but biscuits nonetheless.

Baking cookies to the point where they are still squishy in the middle, but crisp enough on the outside, is a delicate art. But this recipe has never let me down – the trick is to take them out of the oven WAY before you think they are done!

These cookies have become a bit of a staple bake for me recently. They are so quick and easy to make, I can whip up a batch beginning-to-end in less than an hour – perfect for taking to work on someone’s birthday, dropping round to a friends place when they’ve been having a tough time or simply for survival of a day of lectures (which I have been instructed to do this week, and yes girls, I will bring them in on monday!)

If I’m whipping up a proper batch of these I do tend to do 1.5 times this recipe, but that means using 1.5 eggs so I’ve just put in the normal amounts on here – but if you want a few more, or you tend to be a person who eats cookie dough as you go (who? me? never…….!) then I recommend multiplying it all by 1.5 or even 2!

Makes: 16-20 medium sized cookies. (similar dimension to the mug of tea you will have with them!)

What You Need:

• Large Mixing Bowl
• Baking Trays
• Greaseproof Paper
• 115g Butter
• 100g Caster Sugar
• 50g Brown or Demerara Sugar (it makes pretty much no difference which you use!)
• 5ml Vanilla Extract
• 1 Medium Egg
• 200g Plain Flour
• 2.5g Bicarbonate of Soda (1tsp)
• 130g Milk Chocolate Chips

How To Do It: 

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.

2. Mix the Butter, Caster Sugar and Brown/Demerara Sugar in a large mixing bowl until smooth.

3. Add the Egg & Vanilla Extract and mix.

4. Stir in the Flour & Bicarbonate of Soda and mix together until a sticky dough is formed in the bowl. Make sure you draw in all the flour and other ingredients that may be stuck on the side of the bowl.

5. Pour in the chocolate chips and fold into the dough. Make sure it is equally mixed through the dough – you don’t want any cookies without chocolate in!!!

6. Cover your baking tray with greaseproof paper.

7. Make small balls from the cookie dough – approx 2-3cm across – and place on the greaseproof paper. Leave quite a bit of space between as they spread in the oven. I generally put 6 on each tray!

8. Put tray in the oven and bake for 8-11 minutes. Keep an eye on them! They will spread out into a cookie shape and towards the end of the cooking the edges may go VERY slightly brown.

9. Take them out of the oven before they look done! The middle will look fluffy and will almost jiggle to the touch (think soufflé) – this will sink and settle as they cool. They won’t look brown so don’t expect this.

10. If you try them when they are hot, which I’d definitely recommend (yum!) you will think they are undercooked – the middle is like hot cookie dough and you will think they need to go back in – they don’t! 🙂
Leave them to cool and the middle will “set” a little and will result in the sticky, squidgy middle that a cookie just has to have!

Enjoy!