It’s been aaaaages since I last shared any of my recipes with you, so I thought it’s about time I do just that. Last night I baked some cookies and just on the off chance that they may turn out delicious, I did my best to document the process. It wasn’t without a few bumps along the road though. The recipe that I used as a base to change to suit my taste had all the measurements in cups, but I’ve never been very good at following said measurements, so I wanted to convert it to grams. Which I did. With some ingredients… And completely forgot to weigh the others. Sooooo yeah. I did manage to get all the measurements in grams by the end, and even though it was quite a lot of hassle, I’d say it was worth it. I have a recipe! Woohooo!

Coconut + Cranberry Cookies

100g of coconut oil (it should be soft, but ideally not quite liquid)
100g of brown sugar
1 egg
1tsp vanilla extract
100g of flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
100-150g of coconut flakes (depending on how coconutty you want it)
50g of dried cranberries

Step 1 – Mix the soft coconut oil and sugar together. It shouldn’t take any real effort to be honest. It should feel like they’re long lost lovers who have just been reunited, know that they belong together and then they merge to form a blob. Hmm, I need to work on this particular story I think. In any case, in a perfect world the ‘blob’ should be nice and smooth but as I’m not always the brightest of bakers, my sugar had quite a few lumps in it and I couldn’t really get to all of them so I decided to just go with it. It worked out in the end so I wouldn’t worry too much about lumps.

Step 2 – Add the egg and vanilla and just keep on mixing. You can see my mixture still has quite a few sugar lumps here but hey, there are worse things in the world so once again I just let it go (although I did manage to crush a few more of them at this stage – as they were more visible, it was a bit easier).

Step 3 – Add the flour and baking powder and just keep mixing, just keep mixing, mixing, mixing. Also, you’re ‘supposed to’ add the flour gradually, but I just went for it and added all of it in one go. Now, there’s one occasion where I’d advise against adding it all at once, and that’s if you want your cookies to be chewier. If you add the flour gradually you can stop if it looks too dry for your liking. If you’re a bit of a devil-may-care baker like me, then at this stage it may start to feel a bit too dry, but it’s not. It’ll all work out in the end, I promise.

Step 4 – Add the coconut and cranberries. You probably already know what else to do at this stage without me having to repeat it. To be on the safe side though – just keep mixing, mixing, mixing. It’ll look and feel drier still, but it’s fine. You’ll soon find out how it’s going to work out and what kind of sorcery it is.

Step 4.1 – Chill the mixture for about 30 minutes. Also, turn your oven on. I had mine at gas mark 5/375°f/191°C, but if your oven is not an uncooperative maniac, you could probably get away with it being at gas mark 4/350°f/177°C, to make sure they don’t over bake.

Step 5 – That’s where the magic happens. As the coconut oil in the dough is now chilled and quite solid, the dough will be pretty hard. However, as the melting point for coconut oil is super low, once you’ve spooned out a seemingly crumbly and dry piece of dough, just place it on your hand and quickly press it together to form a flat ball shaped dough blob. The heat from your hands will melt the oil on the surface of the ball and help it stick together. To not let all the hard work of chilling the dough go to waste though, try to make the actual human contact with them as brief as possible and if you do need more time to form the balls, you can just pop them back in the fridge for a bit.

Step 5.1 – Pop them in the oven for 10-15 minutes. This step actually makes me quite frustrated. My oven is really old and I never know what temperature it actually is in different parts of the oven, so my first lot were in for 20 minutes, but second lot only for 15 minutes. So I think with a normal oven it should take around 10-15 minutes to bake them enough that they’re still a bit soft and chewy. It will also depend on how flat you make them. The thinner they are the quicker they bake.

Step 6 – Enjoy your freshly baked coconut and cranberry cookies!

Quick steps:

Combine coconut oil and sugar
Add egg and vanilla. Mix until smooth and fluffy.
Add flour and baking powder (gradually if looking for chewier result)
Add coconut and cranberries
Chill dough for 30 minutes
Preheat oven to gas mark 4/350°f/177°C (or equivalent, if you have a pain in the neck oven that’s never the right temperature)
Form flat balls from the dough
Bake for 10-15 minutes

That was my last night’s impromptu baking extravaganza. My SO said he thinks they’re the best cookies I’ve ever baked. I mean, he says it almost every time I bake/cook something, but I do believe him still. I think I just get better with practice, like we all do. Right? Right?! Well, that’s what I choose to believe anyway.

They’re all gone now by the way. To the last crumb. Omnomnom.