Heston’s Chocolate Chip Cookies

Okay, so there a lot of chocolate chip cookies out there. And a lot of them are referred to as ‘the best’ or ‘perfect’. A lot of them have twists – butterscotch chips, caramel centres, the zest of an orange. However, I think there is a strong case to be made for adding these cookies to the collection. I’d never tried a recipe by Heston Blumenthal before – his signature style displayed in his restaurant and TV shows is truly complicated molecular gastronomy with lots of equipment and ingredient lists involving chemicals and numbers so I’ve always been pretty intimidated! Having said that, I do have a couple of his recipes in my To Bake list and if they’re anything like these cookies I’m hoping they’ll turn out really well. This is probably one of the simplest Heston recipes but he’s still added an extra step to the simple cookie – instead of just throwing in some chocolate chips, you make and freeze your own chocolate ganache before chopping it into tiny chunks and stirring it through the dough. It is a bit faffy by adding more time to the recipe (and the ganache melts fairly quickly when you’re chopping it) but really it just requires a bit of extra planning and the results are so worth it. Instead of getting slightly burnt chocolate on the base of the biscuit, the ganache stays really creamy and soft and is better distributed than little chips. The recipe makes big, chewy, classic American cookies – stereotypically perfect with a big glass of milk.I kicked myself after making these for leaving the ganache plain – I think the zest of an orange or dash of cointreau would have been delicious – but I guess their simple flavours is part of the cookies charm. Plus, that just means I have an excuse to make these again! I found the recipe here – enjoy!