When I get inspired to cook something I usually go all out, both in effort and in the buying of ingredients. I will shop around for each individual ingredient and duly purchase everything I need for that recipe if I don’t (or don’t think) I have it/them at home. Usually it’s because our pantry is always full and I can never find anything I want – when I need it. And the thing I want always makes an appearance after the fact. Raa.

Well, for chocolate as one of those pesky elusive ingredients, I made sure that it/they would not outsmart me again.

This is a variation on a basic but great Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe – however – I purposely called it ‘Leftover Chocolate Bit Cookies’ because I did in fact forage through my pantry for every last bit of opened & unfinished chocolaty anything that I could find and used it in place of the general ‘chocolate chips’ you would otherwise need. Granted, I only found enough of the leftover stuff to account for half the portion and I did in fact have to make up the rest of the weight with actual chocolate chips – but this was good too because I now know that in the pantry, I have exactly 145 grams of chocolate chips as spare – and nothing more.

In my pantry foraging, I found the following:

– A bar of cookies and cream filled chocolate (I had eaten half previously – broken off of course and not chewed!). See massive chunk of chocolate at the bottom of the above pic. It’s still in it’s delicious bar cross section!

– 3 Mint Slice biscuits.

– 2 Tim Tams.

– 5 random pieces of Lindt 85% dark chocolate.

– Quarter bag of 75% dark chocolate buttons.

and

– a few random pieces of milk chocolate.

With all of the above, I was able to make 1 cup of chopped chocolate. I snipped everything with scissors so that I ended up with uniform pieces of chocolate, biscuit bits and all. Then I used regular dark chocolate chips to make up the other cup. In total, 2 cups of chocolate pieces are required for this recipe.

What I love about using such random ingredients is not only the wonderful additional flavours you get from doing so but with added buscuits and cream fillings, a whole new level of textures can be experienced in this simple recipe.

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Now for the recipe:

– 250 grams of unsalted butter, at room temperature.

– 1 cup of packed dark brown or muscovado sugar.

– 1/2 cup of fine white sugar.

– 1 egg at room temperature.

– 1 tablespoon of Vanilla essence.

– 2 1/2 cups of plain flour.

– 1 teaspoon of Baking Powder.

– 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

– 2 cups of chocolate chips or chopped chocolate leftovers.

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METHOD

In a stand mixer, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Scrape down the sides of the bow with a spatula and beat again to make the mix more even. I call this spatulation.

Add the egg, Vanilla and salt and beat until well combined. Spatulate again.

Add the flour.

Mix well.

Add the chocolate pieces and stir through with a sturdy wooden spoon.

.Form into a log and wrap tightly with cling wrap. Refrigerate for an hour to allow them to harden up.

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Remove the cling film and slice the cookie dough logs into 1 cm thick pieces and distribute on a lined baking tray with about a 2 finger space between each cookie to allow for expansion.

Bake them for 8-10 minutes. Do not wait for them to colour as by that time they will become too hard.

Leave them on the tray to cool and then place them in an airtight container. You may have to make these in 2 batches as I did. Eat them the day after.

Enjoy!