Please excuse the poor photo. Very bad light really cannot do justice to how rich and laden with chocolate this are.

These are huge! I could make them smaller but I have to admit that when it comes to chocolate I’m just plain greedy and the more the better.  Saying that though, one at a time of these is enough.

Extremely Chocolatey Cookies

Adapted from Baking Magic by Kate Shirazi

125g plain flour

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

25g cocoa powder

125g dark chocolate, melted

85g butter, softened

175g light brown sugar

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

200g chocolate, bashed into pieces with a rolling pin! (I use milk but dark is fine, it’s up to you)

Preheat the oven to 180oC and line 3 baking trays.

Place the flour, bicarb and cocoa in a bowl and set aside.

Melt the 125g chocolate.

Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.  Beat in the eggs and vanilla extract (Tip: As with cakes, add a spoonful or two of flour with the eggs, it helps them blend well with the butter/sugar mix).

Stir in the melted chocolate and then fold in the flour/cocoa mix.

Bash the hell out of the 200g of chocolate with a rolling pin.  Leave it in it’s wrapper whilst you’re doing this, it can get messy otherwise! You should end up with different sized chunks of chocolate, some a little nuggets and some a bit more like little bits of gravel.  Stir into the rest of the ingredients.

Drop dessert-spoonful’s onto the baking trays, well spaced apart and flatten slightly.

Bake for 10 minutes.  Take them out but leave them on the trays for 5 minutes or so to harden slightly then transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling.