Cookies, cookies and more cookies!

I must apologize for my absence from the blog this week… As you can imagine, I’ve been quite preoccupied with the promotion of my book… and I must mention that since my huge Thanksgiving dinner cooking-spree, I haven’t really felt much like getting back in the kitchen just yet! So it’s been mostly panini on the run or in front of the computer for me in the past few days.

I am hosting a book signing and cookie tasting on Thursday evening, however, so I have lots of cookies to bake! I’ve been preparing the dough over the last few days and freezing it, so that on Thursday I can just pull them out of the freezer and toss them in to the oven. It’s a wonderful thing to have a freezer full of cookies: if an unexpected guests pops by, you can present them with a hot plate of freshly baked cookies in under 10 minutes. The trick is to form the cookies into balls before they go in the freezer, that way you don’t have to defrost before baking them. Freeze them on a flat surface for about 30 minutes, then transfer them to plastic bags with a double layer of plastic wrap.

Freeze-Ahead Chocolate Chip Cookies

• 100 g sugar
• 120 g brown sugar
• 115 g butter
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 200 g flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 200 grams chocolate chips
• 130 grams chopped walnuts or pecans

Beat the butter and sugars together in a mixing bowl until creamy. Add in the egg, vanilla and baking soda. Beat slowly.
Stir together the salt and flour in a separate bowl, then mix them in to the batter. Continue mixing until you can no longer see the flour then fold in the chocolate and nuts.
Using a large spoon, form dough in to balls and drop on to cookie sheets lined with parchment paper. The balls should be about 4 cm/1.4 inches in diameter. Place the cookie sheets in the freezer for about 30 minutes, or until the dough hardens enough to handle. Transfer the dough to plastic bags, then wrap tightly with two layers of plastic wrap.

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 150°C/300°F and adjust rack to the top 1/3 of the oven. Transfer dough-balls to cookie sheets (the cookies should be spaced at least 8 cm/3 inches apart) and bake until golden, about 18 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool slightly. Serve warm with a cold glass of milk for dipping. Makes about 20 cookies.