Soft Baked Vanilla Fudge Cookies

Nothing beats a house that smells like freshly baked cookies...except perhaps a house that contains a plate of freshly baked cookies, perhaps with the left over wooden spoon caked in all that glorious cookie dough nearby.

It's getting quite hard to be adventurous with cookie flavourings without being avant-garde, given their rise (no pun intended) in popularity in many supermarkets. I'm aware that toffee cookies are a much loved entity but fudge cookies I've yet to come across. Fudge has a higher melting point than the likes of chocolate so you have to be patient with these allowing them to melt down in the oven and giving them ample time to re-set afterwards.

I'd really recommend this recipe for basic cookie dough which you can jazz up with whatever you taste-buds inspire you with, just substitute the 200g of vanilla fudge for whatever else you fancy: I made a batch of white chocolate (150g) and chopped hazelnut (50g) at the same time as these.

Makes 10-12ish large cookies

Ingredients:

125g Butter

40g Caster Sugar

60g Soft Dark Brown Sugar

1 Medium Egg

125g Plain Flour

1/2 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda

1/2 tsp Cinnamon

Few drops of Vanilla Essence

200g Vanilla Fudge (or whatever else you fancy)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

Line several baking sheets with baking paper or lightly butter them.

Using an electric mixer (or a heavy hand and a wooden spoon) beat the butter with both sugars, in a large bowl, until soft and fluffy.

Beat the egg, then gradually beat this, with the vanilla essence, into the mixture.

Sift the flour and bicarbonate of soda together and carefully fold into the creamed mixture.

Chop the fudge into small pieces and stir into the cookie dough, be careful not to over mix.

Spoon heaped teaspoons of the dough onto the prepared baking sheets, allowing plenty of room for them to stretch their legs and spread out whilst in the oven.

Bake for 10 minutes or until golden. Remove from the oven and allow them to cool for a few minutes before placing them on a wire rack to cool completely, transfer them too soon and they'll be so soft they fall through the rack - I'm speaking from experience here.