Portrait of a cookie

[spacedlaw]

With chocolate bits. I would not call them chocolate chips; what most of you know by that name are much larger than the pin heads I have been using (gocce di cioccolato extra fondente) and more melt prone. Also I sacrificed a much battered Santa for these.



I used:
1/2 cup soft butter
1/2 cup sugar (mine has vanilla pods in it, so it is flavoured)
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
2 1/4 cups flour
1 cup gocce di cioccolato extra fondente
1 battered Santa



Turn the oven to 375F (I used 180C on my ventilated oven)

Mix sugars together in a bowl and add the butter. Whisk well until fairly smooth (only fairly because the sugar remains grainy).
Add the eggs one after the other, mixing all the time.
Add the salt, mix again.
Add the baking powder, mix again.
Add all the flour in one go and mix only a little - just to allow the flour to be folded in.
Add the gocce di cioccolato.
Cut Santa's cadaver in even smaller pieces.
Add these too. It's a great way to dispose of a body.
Fold the chocolaty bits into the mass.
Try not to get stuck.

Line your cooking grate with parchment and portion small dollops of dough well apart.
I used a measuring table spoon for that. The dollops are roughly of a walnut size.

Stick in the oven for 15 minutes.
Make tea.

Let the cookies cool off on a rack before falling on to them.



(I had one for quality control, gave one to Love, and the rest (all 28 of them) will be haunting the hips of my colleagues for evermore as from tomorrow.