So, I adore the playgroups we attend. Fellow parents and their children are wonderful and kind faces, absolutely needed when living (seemingly) in the middle of a few fields where your main conversations, other than with your toddler, are with wildlife and probably yourself. It’s a welcome relief to see and hear other grown ups in a similar position to yourself.
Imagine my glee when I popped my name down on the Rota to bake! When I signed up, I was full of sass/confidence/cockiness and raring to go with some genius baking.
When the day came (or the night before), I was very low on energy, the child had had a whine at every opportunity and we had a power cut half way through. Challenge upon glorious challenge.
On top of that, I’d also experienced the baking of others and, my goodness, we have some undercover Nigellas in our group! Nevertheless, she carried on and made good on a promise.
Chocolate chip (button) cookies
Time to make pending natural disasters, demanding toddler and energy levels. Took me 2 hours, should probably only take 30 minutes.
Ingredients
- 200g room temp butter
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 cup white sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 3 cups flour
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 2 cups (alleged) chocolate chips
Method
- Preheat oven to 160 fan bake/180 non fancy fan
- Throw butter and sugars in a bowl and beat out all the frustrations of the day with what energy you have.
- Throw one egg on the floor because your child snuck up on you and this is evidently the best response. See if you have another egg to replace. Debate clean up now or later.
- Crack the two eggs into the mixture and stir in. Throw in the vanilla while we’re here.
- Fold in the flour and baking powder cup by cup. Taking care not to drop too much on the child circling your ankles. Once it’s wet (because if you didn’t clean the egg up, that’s getting mixed into the hair and on all the cupboards), it’s a pain to clean.
- Find the bag of chocolate bought earlier in a rush and realise you’ve bought buttons instead of chips.
- Swear a little under your breath.
- Attempt smashing them to make them appear like chips.
- Realise this is somewhat futile. Throw in the half smashed buttons and hope for the best. Eat a handful for therapeutic value.
- Roll into small balls around the size of your palm and pop on the baking tray. Press with a fork (remember, we’re fancy now) and put in the oven for around 12 to 15 minutes.
- Allow to cool on a rack and pray to the gods of baking no-one realises it’s buttons in there. Or if they do, that it was intentional.
Blue Tin Homestead 