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About the Recipe
Chocolate chip cookies are an eternal favourite - ridiculously easy to make, bake, and customise. Whether you like yours gooey and oozing with three different kinds of chocolate or simple and crunchy, we found the recipe below to be the most versatile - for example, this episode Lotty added white chocolate chunks and dark cocoa powder to her cookies, while Hannah added Easter Egg chocolate to hers for a seasonal twist.
Ingredients
 150g butter, softened
150g soft brown sugar, golden caster sugar, or ideally half of each
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract - see Hannah's tip below for how to make your own!
180-200g plain flour - Lotty used 180g plus 4 tbsp cocoa powder to get that extra chocolatey kick
½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
200g chocolate chips or chopped chocolate - dark, milk, or white all work!
Preparation
Cream the butter and sugar together using an electric whisk or hand whisk until very light and fluffy, then slowly beat in the egg and vanilla.
Fold in the flour, baking powder, and salt, make sure you don't over-mix your dough.
 Add your chocolate chips, gently folding everything together to give an even chocolate-cookie distribution.
For best results to stop your cookies spreading in the oven while baking, leave the mix to chill for an hour in the fridge, or even better overnight. You can either cover the whole bowl and chill, or form the cookies into balls before chilling.
Preheat the oven to 180oC. Line two baking trays with parchment paper and space out your cookies evenly on each baking tray, leaving plenty of room for them to spread.
Bake for 8-10 minutes if unchilled, or 10-12 minutes if chilled. They will still be a little soft when you take them out of the oven, but will harden as they cool.
The cookie dough can also be frozen, for whenever you want choc-chip cookies on demand! Form the dough into a log, and wrap in clingfilm. When you want a cookie, slice 5mm per cookie, space out on a baking tray and bake for 12 minutes. You can also air-fry for the same effect.
To make your own vanilla extract, you'll need vanilla beans and alcohol: we suggest spiced rum, for that extra warmth, but gin also works well. Slice the vanilla beans lengthwise, scrape the insides of half the beans and place in the alcohol. Put the sliced vanilla beans into the alcohol and make sure they are submerged. Let it sit and extract for a minimum of 8 weeks or up to 6 months.