Baking for Macmillan Coffee Morning

Since my first attempt at baking cupcakes, I have becoming something of an “expert”. I have experimented with fillings and toppings and learnt that buttercream icing is actually incredibly easy to make (and I definitely could have done that here!) However, as that is all I could do, that is all I ever baked –  sticking to what I know, for fear of stepping out of my comfort zone and messing it up. However, after baking them on countless occasions I started to get bored and decided I needed a new challenge.

So, just over a month ago when we held a Macmillan Coffee Morning at work (and of course the cupcakes have already been in there) I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to add a second sweet treat to my baking repertoire.

I decided on cookies (don’t want to get too ahead of myself) and, although they looked fairly simple, I thought I better have a practice first.

Good job I did because, although somehow they actually came out of the oven edible, the process wasn’t without a few hiccups. This began with bugs in my flour, which I didn’t even know could happen, (and was of course thrown straight in the bin not added to the mixture, so no need to worry if you have eaten any…), adding a lot of pepper instead of a sprinkling of salt and leaving my butter ‘cooking’ in the microwave for 5 minutes when it should have been softening for 5 seconds. And to think I had been expecting a call from Mary Berry to be on the next series of Bake Off…

But, after a practice, they seemed to go down quite well on the morning, along with the other delicious treats that filled the office –  making plenty of money for charity whilst filling our bellies with their sugary goodness.

I have since made them for several occasions, using different fillings, such as chocolate and honeycomb, smarties, white chocolate chips and milk chocolate chips.

If you would like to give them a go I used this “Millie’s Cookies” recipe:

Ingredients:

• 125g butter (softened – not melted)
• 100g light brown soft sugar
• 125g caster sugar
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 225g self-raising flour (without weevils)
• 1/2 tsp salt (not a table spoon of pepper)
• 200g of chocolate chips – (or filling of your choice!)

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 180°C or gas mark 4
• Cream butter and sugars, then combine in the egg and vanilla.
• Sift in the flour and salt
• Mix in the chocolate chips (or your filling of choice)
• Roll into walnut sized balls and place on baking paper.
• Cook for 7 – 10 minutes
• Take out the oven and cool on a wire rack.
• If you have made it to this point without nibbling them, it is time to EAT!

This recipe makes a decent batch of cookies – depending how big/small you make them – I have got about 20 out of these ingredients before. However, I have also doubled the recipe in order to make more larger cookies.

Whilst writing this up I have been inspired to try something new, so time to start searching for another ‘basic’ recipe…