Easy peasy ginger (or chocolate or coffee and walnut) cookies


Ingredients

100g butter
75g sugar
1 large( ‘heaped’!) tablespoon of golden syrup
5-6 pieces of crystallised ginger
3 drops of vanilla essence
150g self raising flour
2 heaped teaspoons of powdered ginger
1 heaped teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda

Method

1.Heat the oven to 180 deg C (or a bit less if it’s a fan oven – 170 deg).
2.Lay silicon paper on top of 2 baking trays– or lightly grease the trays if you don’t have this paper.
3.Put the following ingredients into a saucepan: butter, sugar, golden syrup. Heat gently until all ingredients are melted together – but don’t let it bubble!
4.While this is melting, chop 5-6 pieces of crystallised ginger into small chunks. If using ginger in a jar with syrup, you can now add a little of this into the melted mix, along with the chopped ginger. This is optional and the biscuits taste almost as good without the ginger chunks. Add a couple or 3 drops of vanilla essence.
5. Sieve into a bowl; self raising flour, powdered ginger, bicarbonate of soda.
6. Carefully combine the dry ingredients with the wet, in the pan, off the heat. The mixture will seem a little sloppy at first, but as the bicarb starts to work, it will stiffen up. If it is still too sloppy, add a little extra flour. But don’t make the mixture too stiff – the gooier, the chewier!
7.Spoon large teaspoons of mixture onto the trays, spacing them out so that there’s enough room for them to spread out while cooking. You should get about 12, depending on how much mixture you eat in the process!
8.Cook for 12 minutes, by which time they should have spread out and turned dark golden brown.
9.Leave to cool a little before transferring to a wire rack – they will fall apart otherwise.
10.Store in an airtight container.

You can make chocolate chip cookies by leaving out the ginger elements & using chunks of dark chocolate once you’ve spooned out the mixture (Bourneville works best as it re-sets after baking). For double choc cookies, add 1 tablespoon of cocoa to the dry ingredients.
For a grown up coffee & walnut version add a handful of chopped walnuts and 2 heaped teaspoons of instant coffee granules to the dry mix before combining with wet ingredients.





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