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This is where I note my efforts as I try to recreate some old recipes. Most are taken from my small collection of handwritten recipe books which date from the late 1700's to around 1922. I also have a collection of old tatty old recipe books, well thumbed and heavily splashed from years of use. I love all of them.

The old-fashioned very stylised handwriting writing is sometimes difficult to decipher, measurements and cooking instructions are minimal, no tin sizes given. Luckily I enjoy a challenge. Just to complicate things I cook and bake on my wood-fired Rayburn, which can be... unpredictable.

I suspect this blog is less about the food and more about my passion for these lovely old books and the wonderful women who wrote them.


Tuesday, 14 June 2016

Delicious Chocolate Chip Cookies with a Victorian Flavour


These biscuits won't win any prizes for their beauty, that is for sure.

However, one bite reveals their inner beauty - a wonderful combination of dark chocolate, lemon zest and spice, all wrapped up in a crumbly and delicious, chocolate chip studded cookie.

I was out walking the dog (of course!) when I had the idea for using that fabulous flavour combination which I wrote about here to spice up my next batch of cookies, for the people who are working down at Cowslip Cottage.

This quantity makes an enormous batch, so you may want to halve the quantities, although they should store pretty well, given the chance.

Rich, Spicy, Chocolate Chip Cookies        Oven Temp 350 degrees

400g butter
50g good quality dark chocolate, melted
250g icing sugar
450g plain flour
1/2 tsp salt
50g good quality cocoa powder
600g chocolate chips
freshly grated zest of a lemon
1 rounded tsp cinnamon

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, beat in the melted chocolate, sift in flour, salt, cocoa powder and cinnamon and then stir in the lemon zest and chocolate chips.  Treat the dough just as you would do for shortbread, work until it all comes together in a nice lump.

Take a dessertspoonful of dough, roll into a ball, place on a baking sheet, flatten, mark with a fork and then pop them into the oven for approximately 15 minutes.

Cool on a rack.

I hope you enjoy the flavour combination as much as my family do.   The cinnamon is not overpowering and the lemon zest simply becomes 'citrus' which works so wonderfully well with the rich, dark chocolate.

They are good.


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