big sur cookies

big sur cookies

• 11 Dec 2023

For my birthday a friend kindly gave me a book voucher and I used the voucher to buy a copy of Claire Ptak's new book, Love is a Pink Cake. As you know, I just love baking with fruit and nuts and the book is filled to the brim with recipes I can't wait to make.

The biscuit tin was empty so for my first bake, I adapted Claire's recipe for Big Sur cookies. I had everything in my house to make the cookies, apart from the granola, but I had unsweetened muesli so I used that to make the cookies and instead added a little extra brown sugar to the batter. Once the batter was made, I portioned it into 2 tbs balls of cookie dough which I then froze but for how long? 

The recipe didn't state a time, so for the first batch I froze the dough for one hour and when I checked at both 7 and 10 minutes the cookie dough was still raw. In the end the cookies took about 12 minutes to bake. For the second batch of cookies, the dough had been frozen for days. I let the dough balls come to room temperature for 30 minutes before baking and they were still raw at 15 minutes and in the end took 19 minutes to bake. Use the cooking time as a rough guide and look for signs of doneness - still soft in the centre and lightly coloured around the edges.

Here's the recipe for you which makes 18 large cookies or 36  smaller cookies. For all my recipes I use a 250 ml cup, a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

Big Sur Cookies - makes 18 cookies or 36 small ones

Ingredients
150g (1 cup) wholemeal flour 
140g (1 cup) plain flour
1 tsp fine sea salt
1½ tsp baking powder 
135g (½ cup) soft light brown sugar
225g unsalted butter, softened
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
200g (7oz) white chocolate, chopped into chunks
400g (3¼ cups) granola
Flaky sea salt, for sprinkling

Method
Whisk the flours, baking powder and salt together and set aside. Cream the butter and brown sugar just until smooth and combined but do not aerate or make fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla extract and mix well, then mix in the flour until just combined. Add the white chocolate and granola and mix again, just until it all comes together.

Line 1 or 2 trays with baking paper, then use an ice-cream scoop to portion out 18 balls of cookie dough onto the baking sheets. (I used 2 tbs of cookie dough for my cookies). Chill for 30 minutes, then flatten to a thickness of 1.5cm and freeze for 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 170°C fan/190°C/375°F. Defrost the cookies for 5-10 minutes before baking. Sprinkle with the flaky sea salt and bake for 7-10 minutes. They should be just starting to colour, but still soft in the centre. 

Cool on the tray for 10 minutes before placing on a baking rack to cool completely and then store in an airtight container.

Easy to make, not too sweet and the perfect dunking cookie to go with a nice cup of tea. 

See you all again next week for Christmas week 2023.

Bye for now,

Jillian