Can I just start this post by saying that these are THE BEST COOKIES I’VE EVER MADE AT HOME. OK, good.
When I was younger, not much younger in fact, probably about a week ago, my favourite cookies were oatmeal and raisin. I would happily eat them until I was genuinely experiencing severe nausea. This would be the trigger for me to step away from the pack, reconsider how much I should eat, the nutritional value of too many cookies, then go back and have “just one more”.
However, times move on, I’ve grown another week older, but sometimes, certain things don’t change very much. I still have the ability to eat my way through sugar induced nausea, and frankly, oatmeal and raisin cookies still rock the supermarket-bakery cookie world. But the home cooked cookie world opens up all sorts of possibilites and what I’ve got for you here is my newly crowned champion.
I’ve produced a handy checklist of the best features of these cookies for you:
Basically, these are about as healthy as a full season stay in a Nepalese ashram (OK, maybe the sugar and butter brings them down a few marks, but lets not talk about that).
The added bonus of spelt flour is that it gives a slightly denser cookie than wheat would, which works really well with the dense, chewy nuggets of dried mango. Also, this is a really easy baking recipe for you to try at home, there’s very little that can go wrong.
So, my friends, with great pleasure I present to you, my very first, and best, homemade cookie recipe!
Super chewy oat, mango and cardamon spelt cookies
By Gavin Wren
About 15 cookies
PDF recipe card to download or print
Ingredients
100g butter, at room temperature
100g golden caster sugar
100g soft light brown sugar
150g white spelt flour
1 large egg
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/4 teaspoon cardamon seeds, ground
100g rolled oats
100g dried mango
Directions
Using an electric whisk, beat the sugar and butter together until smooth and creamy. Add the egg whilst still beating and stop once it’s all combined into a smooth mixture.
Sieve the flour onto the mix, along with the bicarbonate of soda and ground cardamon seeds. Mix this into the dough until combined, then add the oats and mango and mix until completely incorporated.
Line a couple of baking sheets with greaseproof paper. Take two tablespoons of cookie dough (or 1 fully rounded spoonful, so there is as much dough on top, as there is in the spoon) and make into a ball. Place the ball of dough on the baking sheet. Repeat until you have run out of dough. Arrange the balls so that there is at least 5cm between them as they will spread out a lot when cooking. You can cook these in separate batches if you don’t have enough space on your tray.
Bake for 16-18 minutes, take out of the oven and allow to cool on the tray for a few minutes, then transfer to a wire rack.
Store in an airtight container, or freeze for future use.