Mostaccioli

Something rather odd occurred yesterday. I was released from the office early. This is the type of news I don’t need to be told twice, so I scurried out the door and was home 2 hours earlier than usual. I decided to bake and found this wonderful recipe for chocolate cookies in my pile of “to do” recipes. Everyone who’s tasted them loves them and they weren’t difficult to make. I’d never done glazed cookies before, I think it’s a nice touch.

This recipe came from The Canadian Baker website, and called for walnuts, which I didn’t have, so I used hazelnuts instead, which worked great.

¼ cup butter
½ cup sugar
1 egg
1 ¼ cups plain flour
¼ cup cocoa powder
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp ground cloves
¼ tsp salt
1/3 cup milk
1 cup chocolate chips
1/3 cup chopped hazelnuts

Glaze
1 ¼ cups icing sugar
¼ cup brewed coffee
½ tsp vanilla

Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy and add the egg.

In another bowl, mix the flour, cocoa, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, cloves and salt.

Add this half of this dry mix to the butter mix with a little milk and beat well. Add the rest of the dry mix and milk and mix again.

Add the chocolate chips and hazelnuts and cover and pop into the fridge for 2 hours till firm.

After 2 hours preheat the oven to 180C and line your baking sheets with baking paper.

Roll 1 tbsp of the mixture into balls and place onto the tray an inch apart.

Bake for about 12 minutes (until tops begin to crack). If you used 2 trays, and remember swap the trays from top to bottom of the oven at the half way point.

Allow the cookies too completely before glazing.

For the glaze whisk together sugar, coffee and vanilla and drizzle 1 tablespoon on each cooled cookie and allow to set.
S