By god these are good cookies.

Its getting cold now, and there is need for comfort beyond that which cake can provide. Also Russ cant dunk cake in his tea but he can do that with cookies.

When we go to Brighton we usually get ourselves some cookies from a place called Ben's cookies which is just near the lanes. They used to have an outlet near South Kensington station and when I was working in Chelsea, sometimes I would stop by and get some on the way home. Russ really likes the oat and raisin cookies and I like the milk chocolate ones. The thing with the Ben's cookies is that they're awesome when they're hot but once they cool down they are kinda flaccid. Which is a disturbing quality in a cookie. They were clearly designed to be consumed fast. If I'm making cookies at home though, they cant possibly all be consumed that fast otherwise we'd either die of heart attacks or diabetes so I need to be able to make cookies that are crispy on the outside but chewy in the middle. Because we have different favourites I wanted to combine them together to make something that was less sweet than a chocolate chip cookie and maybe a tiny bit better for you with the oats and raisins.

And here it is, my awesome Oat, Raisin and dark chocolate cookies. I like them because the raisins and dark chocolate give you a little sweetness, the oats make you feel fuller so you feel satisfied with less and the cinnamon reminds me of Christmas.  I didn’t have a picture because we ate them all so you'll have to make some to find out what they look like.

Pre heat your oven to 170 if you have a fan forced oven, 180 without the fan.

In a nice big bowl beat together 125g of soft butter with 2/3 of a cup of soft brown sugar. Sift the sugar because brown sugar always seems to get really clumpy I find. Add in 1 large egg and ½ a teaspoon of vanilla and mix til its all combined. You can do this bit in a mixer or by hand which ever works for you but I tend to mix by hand once I start adding in my dry ingredients out of habit more than anything. Add in ¾ of a cup of plain flour and ½ teaspoon of baking soda (Or the same quantity of self raising flour if you have it just omit the baking soda) ½ a teaspoon of cinnamon, ¼ a teaspoon of salt, 1 and a ½ cups of rolled oats, ¾ of a cup of raisins and 100g of chopped dark chocolate. I go for the chopped kind because it melts slightly in the cookies as they bake so you get these nice little pools of dark chocolate rather than the chips that mysteriously retain their shape.

You can make your cookies all nice and uniform if you use a little ice cream scoop to space them out on your trays otherwise just try and make them as uniform as possible. I like to make them about golf ball sized as you get a nice big cookie then which will satisfy most anyone. They spread on the trays so give them a couple of inches of space around each cookie to grow. Bake for about 15 mins or until you see the edges start to go golden and let them cool on their trays for about 10 mins before you go moving them about.

They lasted for up to a week in the biscuit tin here but by the time I thought I'd blog about them they were gone. Should yield you about 12 to 18 big cookies but could be more if you made little ones.

Next up: Roses and chocolate.