Perfect for when you just need a chocolate cookie kick, you can leave the dough in the fridge once it’s made, and cut and cook as you need for up to a week – if it lasts that long! You can also freeze it for up to three months – perfect for emergency cookie baking! These are small, tasty and versatile. Feel free to replace the vanilla extract with orange extract, and add some orange zest too.
Chocolate Refrigerator Cookies
Ingredients
100g butter or baking spread
100g caster sugar
1 egg yolk
175g plain flour
25g cocoa
pinch of salt
50g finely chopped dark chocolate
Method
- Beat the baking spread/butter using a hand or stand mixer with the paddle blade attached, for two minutes at medium speed until it’s light and soft.
- Add the sugar and continue to mix for two minutes.
- Pop in the egg yolk and mix until well combined.
- Add vanilla and combine.
- Whisk the flour, cocoa and salt in a small bowl, so there are no lumps.
- Add the flour mix to your butter and sugar mixture and mix on a slow speed until just combined.
- Here you can add you chocolate chunks, but – a word of warning – once the dough has been in the fridge, the chunks will make the ‘cookie sausage’ tricky to cut evenly unless they are super small. I prefer to press them into each cookie before baking.
- Dust your worktop really lightly with flour, then tip out the dough and form into a ball, then roll into a cookie dough sausage about 25cm long and 5cm in diameter.
- Wrap tightly in cling film and pop in the fridge for a minimum of four hours, but maximum of a week, if you’re not going to freeze the mix. (If you’re planning to freeze it, you’ll need to thaw completely before baking – minimum two hours in the fridge.)
- When you want to bake the cookies, preheat your oven to 180°C/fan 160°C/gas mark 4 and cut the cookies about 1cm thick – as many as you want – and place on a lined baking tray.
- If you haven’t added chocolate chunks, press a few in now to each little cookie.
- Bake for 10 minutes, until they’re firm to the touch, but still soft in the centres.
- Cool for a minute on the trays, then remove to a cooling rack and enjoy warm.
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Adapted from The Ultimate Chocolate Cookie Book by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough
