A delicious recipe for Mother's Day: Hector's chocolate cookies

Hector, our youngest, is eleven, and has been making these chocolate cookies for me every Mother's Day for a couple of years now. They’re delicious! 

He tells me that what he loves most about baking is that you can make things that taste good and put your own twist on them. It's really lovely seeing him get creative – adding different toppings, trying new flavours, making each batch a little bit his own. He also tells me he learned to bake with his dad and his brother Arthur. I'd like it on the record that I too have done a considerable amount of baking with him over the years!

Hector often bakes on weekend afternoons when he's at a loose end. It means he's doing something unconnected to a screen, which is no bad thing. I love my boys cooking. It's such an important life skill – to be able to rustle up a snack or a simple meal, to bring something homemade to a friend's house. And there's something particularly lovely about baking for someone else.

The AGA is a great oven to learn on – easy, intuitive, and the heat is gentle enough that it takes quite a lot to burn something. The results still come out well even when things don't go entirely to plan – a wonderful way to build confidence in the kitchen.

Hector loves the smell of the butter melting, the taste of the uncooked dough. The challenge, he says – rightly – is waiting until they've cooled before eating them.

Not that things always go completely smoothly. There was an early incident involving fried eggs on the simmering plate. I suggested he put the Bake-O-Glide down and crack the eggs onto it. I didn't think to mention opening the hotplate lid first. A small crisis followed. The second fried egg, though, was perfect. And the AGA of course was fine.

These cookies have never gone wrong once.

How to make them

Prep time: 15 minutes. 
Cooking time: 15 minutes. 
Makes around 16 cookies, depending on the size of your dough balls – and how much disappears before they reach the oven.

Hector's chocolate of choice is a bar of Cadbury's Dairy Milk, broken into chunks – but as he says, anything that tastes good works.

You'll need:

250g plain flour 
170g unsalted butter 
200g soft brown sugar 
100g caster sugar 
½ tsp salt 
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda 
1 egg plus 1 yolk
 ½ tsp vanilla extract 
Chocolate of your choosing, broken or chopped into chunks

Melt the butter gently in a pan on the simmering plate. While still warm, combine with both sugars in a large bowl and mix well. Add the egg, extra yolk and vanilla extract and stir until smooth.

Add the flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda, then fold together until you have a soft dough. Stir through your chocolate chunks.

Roll into balls roughly the size of a golf ball and place on a lined baking tray, leaving a good gap between each – they spread. Slide into the baking oven and cook for around 15 minutes, until the edges are just set and the centres still look slightly soft. They'll firm up as they cool, leaving a little chewy softness in the middle that’s just right.

Leave on the tray for a few minutes before moving – they're fragile when hot. Then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely, if you can bear to wait.

If you'd like to talk to us about bringing an AGA into your family's kitchen, we'd love to hear from you. Get in touch, give us a ring, or come and visit one of our showrooms.