Mint Chocolate Cookies

The chocolate cookies I made a couple of weeks ago didn’t sit in the biscuit tin for too long. The boy I live with demanded more... but asked for them to be minty as well as chocolaty. The threat was that if I didn’t comply he would be bringing home mint chocolate clubs from Morrisons to satisfy his very specific craving. Gah! That would be bringing the temptation of dairy chocolatey goodness/badness within my grasping range. And so I set out to make cookies that would taste even better than mint chocolate clubs, and I think I’m not far off. These probably aren’t the world’s greatest mint chocolate cookies, but they’re pretty damn tasty nonetheless.

Ingredients

• 240g soya spread
• 340g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp good quality peppermint extract (using ‘flavouring’ simply won’t be as good)
• 225g plain flour
• 100g cocoa
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 200g good quality dark chocolate (cut into rough chips)


Ten basic baking steps

1. Preheat oven to 180°C

2. Line 3-4 baking sheets with greased baking paper (if you only have 2 you can just reuse on round two

3. Whisk the soya spread and sugar together until light and creamy

4. Slowly beat in the eggs and peppermint extract, adding a spoonful of flour to prevent curdling.

5. Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder, soda and salt together and repeat the sifting process a second time to ensure the ingredients are well combined and aerated.

6. Slice the flour mixture into the batter until blended.

7. Stir in the chocolate







8. Spoon the mixture onto the prepared trays. It depends how big you want your cookies to be. I used large-mounded teaspoons as a measure. Leave a small gap between each cookie dough to allow for spreading




9. Bake for around 9 minutes (this will depend on the size of your cookies and on individual ovens... ) The cookies are done when the edges begin to firm up. Wait for 5 minutes and then carefully remove onto cooling rack. The cookies will further harden as they cool on rack.

10. Eat with or without a lovely cup of tea. I found dunking them very enjoyable.