For some reason, we are not big chocolate chip biscuit makers in this household. This does not mean that we are not enthusiastic consumers of said comestible. I LOVE them and when the mid-morning or mid-afternoon hunger pangs hit at work I’ll often nip next door to the café and buy one.
I suspect the lack of home production stems more from the fact that we rarely have biscuits in the household full stop. However, last Friday afternoon Master 4 and I were off to a play date and I asked him what he wanted to take. Cue a search for a quick, simple chocolate chip biscuit recipe that wouldn’t require multiple trips to the shops.
Luckily (as always) UK’s Delicious came to the rescue with this recipe. For anyone cooking with a child, it’s easy (OK – we do have a stand mixer!) and they will love eating the mixture, shaping the biscuits and pressing in the chocolate chips. As you can see from the photo, four chocolate chips per biscuit is woefully inadequate!
These biscuits strike, for me at least, the right balance between crispy and chewy. I think that that’s down to the combination of caster and light brown sugars. Make sure you use a good quality vanilla essence as the flavour does really shine through (especially if you are mean on the choc chip count and also if the biscuits last a couple of days). If you’re going to beef up the chocolate content, then you could probably omit the vanilla altogether.
We’ve really enjoyed eating these and as they were super quick to do I’m sure they’ll be making more regular appearances in our kitchen.
- 100g unsalted butter, softened
- 100g caster sugar
- 100g light brown sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp vanilla bean paste (or good quality extract, or omit altogether)
- 165g plain flour
- ¼ tsp salt
- ½ tsp bicarb
- chocolate chips - as many as you want!
- Preheat your oven to 150°C fan (170°C conv) and line two baking trays with baking paper.
- Cream the butter and sugars until pale. Add in the egg then the vanilla, flour, salt and bicarb. Mix until well combined and smooth.
- Take a tablespoon and form large walnut sized balls of biscuit mixture. Place them on the baking trays - well spaced as they spread a lot (they are easy to separate so don't be too worried about them joining up during baking) and press in choc chips. Four per biscuit looks like a lot when they're a ball but looks like nothing once they're cooked - so be generous rather than mean.
- Bake for 15 minutes - the biscuits will spread and start to pick up a hint of brown at the edges. Depending on your oven you may want to keep an eye on them from the 10-12 minute mark. In my oven - 15 minutes was perfect.
- The recipe will make between 16 and 20 biscuits. The biscuits do end up quite large but they are also quite flat so they are not like the biscuits you get in cafes that are often as big as your head.
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool ever so slightly before carefully moving on to racks to cool completely.