Bake While You Blog: Cranberry and White Chocolate Cookies

Difficulty - 2/5
Duration - 1/5

They say true art takes time. They say good things come to those who wait. They say you should wash your hands before you cook. To all of them I say "pah!" followed by a contemptuous sneer! I follow no rules; no man may force self-moderation or due care upon me, I have things to do gosh-darn-it. Today, I will be doing a little bit of baking once again but, this time, I plan on writing the post in real time as I do so (with time after to add photos and secretly re-edit the whole thing to make it funny because I'm a hypocrite and this whole paragraph was actually just a lead-in to me blogging while I make cookies and not actually a declaration of my life mantra and oh look, here comes a right parenthesis), so get yourself comfy and let's bake some motha fuckin cookies. Who knows how they might turn out...

Hey! Spoilers!

OK, first thing is ingredients. I've stolen the recipe for these from an unnamed Cranberry juice company's website but tweaked the amounts a little for my own nefarious purposes, as is customary in baking. How about getting all the stuff we need together first:

Weird off-brand alternatives are accepted.

- 150g butter (margarine if you're a pussy)
- 160g brown/golden/non-race specific sugar
- 2 large eggs (preferably chicken)
- 350g oats (hint: the weirder the shape of the triceps on the burly scotsman on the front of the box, the better the oats)
- 350g plain flour
- 1tsp bicarbonate of soda/baking soda/baking powder/powder of baking soda/soda powder baking spirit/teenage mutant ninja powder
- a tequila shot's worth of salt
- 140g organic, hand-picked, sun-dried cranberries from New Hampshire (or similar)
- 200g white chocolate chips
- a little squirt of milk

OK, we good for ingredients? 3, 2, 1, go!

First, preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celcius. Then start by putting the butter and sugar in a fuck-off big mixing bowl (just smaller than a "jesus, that's huge" and a little larger than "knowing smile") and mix them together as one is wont to do when using a mixing bowl. You might have to use your hands to mush the butter and sugar together for a bit to get things going, but once it's started to come together add in the eggs and whisk until you get a nice creamy looking gunk.

*insert semen joke here*

My fingers are all sticky now and I didn't think this whole typing and baking thing through before I started. Although butter and sugar is the best thing to lick off your fingers, so silver linings. Can we just call it done here? Hand me a spoon.

Next, sieve the flour and baking soda into another bowl and add the oats. Don't be a fanny like me and almost start trying to sieve the oats too, it doesn't work and my mum saw and she's now worried she passed all her bad genes on and created a brain-dead man child. Oh yeah, cause I'm back at home for the summer at the moment I've got the extra challenge of getting in the way of dinner and being given weird looks by my parents for photographing every minute stage of a pretty simple baking process.

The universal look for "You are a fucking ninny".

So yes, sieve the flour and baking powder, not the oats. I didn't have a big enough bowl to mix them together first but you should do that if you can and then add it all bit by bit into your eggy, buttery, sugar splurge, mixing thoroughly. Pro tip: use a knife and chop into the mixture to help bring it together; it's way easier than a spoon and you don't have to keep scraping sticky stuff off your utensils.

*insert semen joke here*

The mixture got very dry by the time I'd added all the oats and flour, so I've chucked in a splash of milk to help keep things from falling apart. Milk: forever the great mediator. Chuck in the cranberries and chocolate bits, mix thoroughly and wahey, we're ready to get cooking! Excuse me for a moment while I dollop a few tablespoon-sized servings on to a baking tray and chuck 'em in the oven for 8-10 minutes.

We will now break for a short intermission. 

So the first batch is a little...how should I say...squidgy...?

*poke*

Right, slight change to the plan. When you put the cookies on the tray, flatten them out a bit with a spoon before putting them in the oven, otherwise the outside is fine but the middle dun't cook and stays all yicky. Second time round they seemed to work much better. Huzzah! Once they've cooled a little all that's left to do is pop the kettle on-

*poke*

-make a brew-

#nofilter #juststeamproblems #teabagging

-and enjoy a well earned cookie with the fam bam. How's it taste, papa Thompson?

Time lapse never lies.

They're actually surprisingly lovely for such a simple recipe, although certainly closer in relation to a flapjack what with all the oats than a cookie. Well, this didn't go quite as badly as I expected, back off to work then!