White Chocolate, Apricot and Oat Cookies

I had some dried apricots to use up and felt like doing something a bit different. I came across this recipe on Martha Stewart's website and it was fantastic. So good, in fact, that I made two batches in one week - the first were a bit large so I adjusted to make them smaller, but if you'd rather large cookies then just double the amount of mix per cookie. I haven't really adjusted the recipe much, except for translating it into weight (rather than volume) and British English rather than American English (i.e. oats vs. oatmeal). These are more like 'American style' chewy cookies than what I would view as 'English' biscuits. Because these are 'drop' cookies and spread during cooking, you will likely need to do them in a couple of batches.

 

Makes around 24 medium sized cookies, less if making large.

Ingredients

120g white flour
70g porridge oats (doesn't need to be anything fancy - I just used cheap porridge oats from supermarket)
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
55g unsalted butter
120g golden granulated sugar (or other brown sugar)
25g caster sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
1 egg
100g white chocolate
100g dried apricots

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C / 350 degrees F / Gas Mark 4

1. Cream butter and sugar together in a bowl.

2. Add egg and beat in.

3. Add salt and vanilla and stir.

4. Add flour, bicarbonate of soda and oats and fold into the mixture. The mixture will be quite dry - this is good as the cookies spread out a lot during cooking and you don't want the mixture to be sloppy.

5. Roughly chop chocolate and apricots and add to the mix, mixing thoroughly.

6. Put the mixture in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

7. Line a couple of trays with greaseproof paper. Take about half a heaped tablespoon of mixture, roll into a ball, and place on the tray. Do this for eight more cookies, and make sure to leave a couple of inches between each cookie as they will spread out a lot. If making large cookies, you want to allow for more space between the balls and probably only make 6 cookies per tray.

It's important to roll them into a ball as otherwise they will spread too thinly. I used my hands to shape them, but a useful tip I read was to use an icecream scoop, so if you have one, that might help.

Whilst the first batch is cooking, return the rest of the mixture to the fridge - if the mix is too warm when it goes in the oven, it will 'over spread'.

8. Bake in an oven for around 10 - 12 minutes, until the edges are just starting to brown - you will need to keep an eye on them to make sure they don't burn. If you are making larger cookies (i.e. a heaped tablespoon of mix), bake for 14 - 16 minutes. Leave to cool for at least 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack, as the cookies will be very soft when first removed from the oven, and will solidify upon cooling.

Repeat until all the mixture has been cooked.