Spicefreak

Hey folks, it’s a few days late but I decided to make you something for white day, after all.

And, of course, it was always going to be late. I don’t do recipe posts on thursdays.

This weekend, though, I’ve made something thematically appropriate for you all to have a go at: Chimp chocolate chip cookies, using the leftovers from my recent review.

Truth be told, they didn’t come out exactly as I’d planned but they were so soft, cakey and tasty that I had to share them, regardless.

Here’s what I used:

350g self-raising flour

125g salted butter

100g white sugar

100g light brown sugar

1 large egg

1 shot (25ml) milk

20 squares Screaming Chimp chocolate

1 teaspoon scotch bonnet flakes

But I’m going to say right now, ditch those flakes. They don’t mix in properly. All they add is a piercing

4/10

Heat

in random places as you’re eating the biscuits, making for an unpleasant chilli roulette situation.

If you really want more heat than the chocolate can provide, or to bump up the amount of chilli flavour, see if you can find some scotch bonnet powder, instead. As we saw with my recent gingerbread, powder blends in far better.

And, speaking of those, this is a very similar base recipe. Only, I’ve added a touch more flower and some milk to make it light and fluffy. Perhaps, in fact, too light and fluffy. As you can see from this cross section, they’re now more cake than biscuit.

Should that prove an issue for you, I would replace half of my self-raising flour with plain but, honestly, I rather like it this way. They’re just so soft!

So, with my possible modifications out of the way, here’s what I did:

I began, as before, by combining flour and butter (and the chilli) by hand, chopping the room temperature spread as finely as possible before rubbing them together into a crumb-like consistency. Then I stirred in both sugars and beat the egg with the milk.

I combined the two resulting mixtures and viola, a cookie dough appeared! So it was time to chop the chocolate.

Twenty squares, all carefully quartered. Just shy of a full bar so, if you’re using one colour you’ll still have a little left to eat. Me, though, I used both Chimp chocolates for a little more variety and I’m really glad I did.

Now, it’s time to stir in the chocolate chunks and refrigerate the mixture. An even more important step, this time, to keep those chunks from spreading out into the dough.

By refrigerating the batter, we get highly distinct, melt-in-the-mouth-soft pockets of milk and white chocolate flavour but, more than that, we get Screaming Chimp chocolate flavour – Smooth, creamy fruitiness in some mouthfuls, contrasted by dark, earthy, roasted coffee in others. Much more exciting than simply two different colours!

These cakey cookies may not have been what I intended but, after fifteen minutes in the oven at my usual 180°c, they still came out delightful and that, as far as I’m concerned, is what matters.

Just try and space them out a bit, since I didn’t realise in advance just how much they would grow.

And don’t be afraid of their bite. Without the flakes, even the largest chunks of chocolate barely scrape the bottom of my scale’s

3/10

Heat

A burn on the high end of restaurant medium, which should be mild enough for most, yet still strong enough to satisfy. Far from the focus of these little treats but a very enjoyable extra.