Smarties cookies

It has taken me years to perfect cookies, whilst they are very simple and only require a few ingredients, everyone knows they need to be gooey on the inside and crunchy on the outside. This BBC Food recipe does exactly that.

First cream together 125g of butter with 100g of light brown sugar and 125g of caster sugar. Once combined, add an egg and 1 tsp of vanilla essence. 

Then add 225g of self raising flour and a pinch of salt. The recipe suggests adding chocolate chips but smarties look and taste a lot better!

Then make walnut-sized balls and place them on a greased baking tray, make sure you leave enough room for them to expand to prevent them from making one giant cookie.

Place in the oven at 180°C for between 7-10 minutes depending on how gooey you want them to be in the middle.

These are definitely best eaten the minute they come out of the oven!

Malteser Cookies

Who doesn't love cookies? Especially when they taste just like Millie's Cookies. This BBC Food recipe makes the most delicious crunchy-on-the-outside and gooey-on-the-inside cookies. Whilst the recipe includes chocolate chips, I couldn't resist adding Maltesers too, both inside and on top of the cookies!

Like most other cookie recipes, it has few ingredients. The butter (125g) and sugar (125g white and 100g light brown) need to be creamed together before adding in the egg and tsp of vanilla essence. Then sift in the self-raising flour (225g) and salt (1/2 tsp) before combining the chocolate chips (200g) and half the box of Maltesers into the cookie dough.

Then blob spoonfuls (the size depends on how many you want - as you can see I went for big!) onto the tray (preferably on grease-proof paper or a greased tin as they will stick) before crumbling the remaining Maltesers over the top of the cookies. 

Depending on how soft you want them to be, take them out after 7 (gooey) -10 (crispy around the edges) minutes. They are best eaten straight out of the oven when they are still gooey and the chocolates melted (not that you need reminding).

Mars Bar and Milky Way Cookies

Still got chocolate tins left lying around the house from Christmas? This is the perfect recipe to use them all up before starting the January diet (or not in my case). I used a BBC Food basic cookie recipe and swapped the chocolate chunks for various tin chocolates. If your household is anything like mine it will be the mars bars, bounties and milky ways.

Just like any other cookie recipe; cream the butter and sugar together, add an egg and drop of vanilla extract, then a pinch of salt and self raising flour, before finally adding in the chopped up chocolates (I just used all the chocolates I had left).

Then roll the dough into walnut sized balls, any bigger and it will be one big cookie, and be sure to leave enough room between them (I did three in a row).

As you can see they go delicious and crunchy but don't be fooled, they are still incredibly gooey inside but you've got to eat them warm!

Peanut Butter and Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies

I've seen several recipes for peanut butter and chocolate cookies on Pinterest recently, all of which look delicious but as most of them are American recipes the measurements are in cups. 

So instead I searched for a UK recipe and found a BBCFood one which I added dark chocolate chips too.

This is another recipe that requires very little ingredients and even less effort as it is a 'shove it all in at once and mix' recipe. 

Once you've combined all the ingredients into a dough, roll it into walnut size balls. 

As you place the dough balls on the baking tray, squish them down with the palm of your hand to make them flat on the tray. 

Pop them in the oven and in no time at all you'll have a fresh batch of peanut butter and chocolate cookies.