We received a small paper leaflet through the post a few weeks ago advertising for our local village fete. We like to support local activities but then realised this fete was very local and invited people to show various fruits, vegetables, flowers, crafts and bakes. It was 15p to enter a particular category and the prize money – get this – was 75p for first place and 50p for second place!

So obviously with that amount of prize money up for grabs we had to enter (!)

We scoured the various categories and eventually settled on making bread (any type) and cookies (very specifically, only 6 were to be shown). I wanted to do a slightly different take on a chocolate cookie so decided to use Daim bars as I think they have a slightly more bitter, salty taste.

Now, I should probably say that whilst I love cooking and baking I am not actually very good at it. Cake baking I find hard as I don’t really like measuring out the ingredients but I’ve quickly learnt that that is pretty key! This was also my first time making cookies and I was really worried they would just spread out on the baking tray and be too thin and burn, or be too soggy. As it was, they turned out pretty good!

I did a trial run a couple of nights before and realised that I should have left them to bake for a couple of minutes longer, as although the chocolate had started to melt, the dough was still super soft underneath.

So, lesson learnt I set about to make the second batch and they turned out lovely!

You will need: (makes approximately 20-25 tasty, gooey cookies)

150g of butter

300g all-purpose flour

1/2 tablespoon of bicarbonate of soda

1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract/sugar

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

150g light brown soft sugar

100g caster sugar

1 egg

1 egg yolk

2 tablespoons of milk

5 Daim bars, chopped into small pieces

Lets bake!

1. Melt the butter in a medium-sized saucepan and put to one side to cool.
2. In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, bicarbonate of soda, salt and vanilla.
3. Mix the two sugars together and add to the butter, stirring to remove any lumps. Add the egg, the egg yolk and the milk and stir until smooth.
4. Slowly add the flour and mix, ensuring there are no lumps.
5. Add the Daim pieces and stir through to even them out.
   

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6. Place in a mixing bowl and cover with cling film and place it in the fridge for a few hours.
7. Preheat your oven to 190 degrees and grease a baking tray, covering with baking paper.
8. Form the dough into rough balls (trust me, mine weren’t balls but more like odd-shaped blobs!) and place on the baking tray, about 2 inches apart.
9. Bake in the oven for 8-10 minutes. I found that setting a timer for 7 minutes and then monitoring it minute by minute helped. Although you want the Daim bars to be gooey, you also the cookies to have a lovely golden colour to them so try not to take them out too early. About 9 minutes is perfect depending on your oven.

Enjoy!!

I was up at 7am this morning finishing off the bake so that they would be fresh for the fete today. Then Sam said that presentation was likely to add points, so I couldn’t possibly just put them on a plate! After a bit of panicking I came across a super-simple way of creating a little box from a paper plate on Google, so sent Sam to the shop to buy some paper plates.

To make the box, you just need to make 4 cuts, 2 at the top about 2 inches apart, and 2 at the bottom. Then fold from cut to cut on each side, and then across so that the fold dissects the cuts at 90 degrees. Then sellotape into place. These are possibly the worst instructions in the world so I’ve copied a picture of where the cuts and folds need to be below:

& here are the amazing hopefully-category-winning Daim cookies!

We’re off to the fete now so I’ll let you let you know it goes! Wish us luck!

We also made some bloomer bread as well so I’ll have to remember to post our recipe for that soon too.