Becoming Betti Baker: Milk Chocolate Chunk Cookies

These cookies have quickly become a favourite of mine... why?? because I can make a batch of dough up, bake some, and freeze the rest into portion to bake later. I've found that if I make a batch up fortnightly I haven't had to buy any store bought biscuits! I have also discovered the Woolworths cooking chocolate block works fabulously cut up into chunks and is super cheap for a huge block!

So what do you need? …

250 grams of butter
3/4 of a cup of Caster Sugar
3/4 of a cup of Brown Sugar
2 teaspoon of Vanilla paste
1 Egg
2 Cups of Plain Flour plus 1/4 of a cup for kneading
1 teaspoon of bi-carb soda
Chocolate of your choice roughly cut into chucks... I use about 180 grams of milk chocolate, which is roughly half of a 375 gram block of the Woolworths Homebrand milk chocolate.

How you do it…

First soften your butter either by letting it sit out for a few hours or a quick zap in the microwave, being careful not to melt the butter.
Using a hand mixer or a mixmaster, cream the softened butter, both sugars, the vanilla paste and the egg together until you get a nice smooth creamy consistency.
In two batches add the flour and baking soda, and mix well.
Now mix in the chocolate, you can do so by hand mixing with a wooden spoon, or be lazy like me and just throw in all in with the second batch of flour and let the mixmaster do the heavy lifting.
Turn the dough out onto a well floured bench and give in a good knead.
Roll it out into a long snake, wrap in a cling film and let it sit in the fridge for a couple of hours, this makes it cut into disks really easy.
When you are ready to bake, cut into cm slices and bake for 12 minutes on 190 degrees, or until golden. Let cool on a wire rack.
If your not making a huge amount of cookies in one hit freeze the leftovers in zip lock bags, I have found they only take about an hour to defrost.