So many places promise that their cookie is the best, or their recipe will spring forth the best cookie. But in lockdown, my youngest and I sought to find a way to make a recipe for what WE wanted in a cookie. We started with an amalgam of cookie recipes we had made (see Hugh’s Ten Minute Cookies as a starter, ) and then we looked at this excellent ‘parametric’ of how to make cookies just as YOU want them, and we experimented.

You may need to sign up to read all the data but it’s free and I think Chef Steps is brilliant. We specifically wanted to ‘step up the chew’ and Chef Steps told us that to do this we could do all, or one, of a few things, namely: increase the hydration. In our case we added an egg white. Melting the butter also releases the water in it so we know do that instead of just using softened butter. Change the flours, we introduced bread flour – I know! – into our recipe. Change the sugars, we upped the brown sugar to white sugar proportion. By carefully decreasing the cooking time you can also add to the chew, but if you get this wrong – dah dah DAH – you’ll just end up with a soft cookie. That ain’t no bad thing but it won’t be che-wy.

Anyway, I’ve had this recipe under a magnet on the fridge for two years now and I live in fear of losing it. We took ages to get it how WE wanted it. So I’m committing it to here so it’s forever saved. You may also enjoy it but you can now experiment and make YOUR cookie the best.

125g butter, melted and cooled. I use unsalted but if you use salted butter don’t add the salt mentioned later.

150g soft brown sugar

75g granulated

1 whole egg and one egg white (I save the yolk for brushing atop bagels and these ‘almost’ brioches I make regularly)

Two teaspoons of vanilla extract

75g white bread flour

75g wholemeal spelt (I tend to use Baker’s Blend as that’s what we have which is mostly wholemeal with some white spelt)

Half a teaspoon of baking powder

A pinch of salt if your butter wasn’t salted

150g chocolate chips

100g chopped nuts

Oven to 175C fan so you can do two trays at once. Bake time is 7/8 minutes.

METHOD

Cream together the 125g melted and cooled butter and the 150g of soft brown sugar and 75g of granulated sugar. You can do this by hand or in a freestanding mixer with the whisk attachment. Then add your one whole egg and one egg white (you don’t need to whisk the egg white first or anything like that). Then the two teaspoons of vanilla extract.

Now add your 75g of white bread flour and your 75g spelt with half a teaspoon of baking powder and the pinch of salt, if using. If you’ve been using a freestanding mixer, untether the bowl form the mixer and manually mix in the chocolate and nuts.

Use a tablespoon to put dollops on a baking tray lined with baking parchment and bake in a preheated 175C fan oven for 7/8 minutes. This mixture keeps in the fridge for a few days so you can have fresh cookies in an instant.