Chewy chocolate chunk cookies =)

It's so difficult to resist those American-style cookies that are sold from stands in shopping centres....  We all know the ones!  Hubby will quite happily buy a dozen and munch them all in one sitting...  Or rather, he would before I started making them at home!!!  The trouble is, one large egg makes a batch of 35-40 cookies, and he manages to get through the lot in a couple of days =)

They are so easy to make, I guarantee you will never buy them again.  We like boring old milk chocolate chip ones, but you can add whatever chunks you like.


Ingredients:

200 g very soft unsalted butter or margerine
100 g light muscavado sugar
115 g caster sugar
325 g self-raising flour (or plain flour plus 1 tsp baking powder and 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda)
1 large egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
200 g chopped milk chocolate


Method:

• Put all the ingredients except the chocolate into a large mixing bowl and beat with electric beaters until well mixed 
• Stir in the chocolate then chill the mixture in the fridge for at least two hours
• Once chilled, roll the mixture into balls roughly 3.5-4 cm in diameter, and put back into the fridge until you are ready to bake them - they need to be baked from chilled otherwise they will spread too much.  The uncooked mixture will keep for 3 days

• Preheat your oven to gas mark 4 (180°C/160°C fan)
• Line a baking tray with greaseproof or baking paper and place 8 balls onto it
• Bake for 8-10 mins depending on size.  They will look slightly under-done, but will continue to cook as they cool.  They will spread out and puff up a bit but will sink again when removed from the oven
• Leave to cool for at least 10 mins before removing from the paper 

I like to believe that by leaving the pre-rolled balls in the fridge, hubby will bake them himself when he fancies some, but that never happens!  I like mine with raisins and oats, and the kids love them with little marshmallows.......