Dare to go to the dark side with these cookies

I am so one of those people who gets engrossed in trashy late night telly. A favourite in our household is Diners, Drive-ins and Dives on Food Network. In fact, we've pretty much decided as a family we're going to have to do an American road trip purely to visit some of Guy Fieri's recommendations. I'm talking ribs the size of a house dripping with spicy barbecue sauce. Huge cookies sandwiched together with ice cream. Jambalaya. Beignets. Brisket sandwiches. Oh yes!

Something that caught my eye recently on the tellybox, while drooling over a Stateside-made ice cream show, was the birth of the 'crownie' or 'brookie'. Oh. My. God!

So we've had the cruffin (a croissant shaped into a muffin) and the cronut (you guessed it, a doughnut made from croissant dough), but this was something else. A chewy cookie, pulled apart to reveal molten brownie mix. Of course it looked sickly and sweeter than a unicorns ponytail, but I had to try it.

The results dear reader were so devilishly good I had to remove the tin from my house to prevent my kids going into sugar overload – so greedy were they to demolish the lot.

Instead they ended up back at my office, pushed under the noses of my colleagues for a donation to the recent Macmillan Coffee Morning.

If you've got a sweet tooth, put these on your to-bake list this weekend. They're at their best eaten about 15 to 20 minutes after coming out of the oven, when they have that gooey heart, but aren't so hot you'll burn your tongue (we've all been there).

Watch the video of how to make them at the Eat Suffolk and Eat Norfolk Facebook page.

Enjoy!

Chocolate chip Brookies

(makes 15 large biscuits)

Ingredients

For the brownie mix:

75g unsalted butter (not spread)

100g best dark chocolate (at least 60% cocoa solids)

50g plain white flour

1 large egg

50g golden caster sugar

80g dark muscovado sugar

20g good quality cocoa (I use Green and Black, Bourneville or Dr Oetker)

Large pinch sea salt

For the cookie dough:

150g unsalted butter, cubed

150g golden caster sugar

100g light brown sugar

1 large egg

300g plain floura

1tsp baking powder

1tsp vanilla extract

A pinch sea salt

150g dark chocolate chips

2tbsps colourful sprinkles

Method

Make the brownie mix first. Melt the butter and sugars in a small saucepan on a low heat. Once melted, remove from the heat and add the chocolate. Stir to melt and pour into a bowl. Allow to cool. Add the egg, flour, salt and cocoa and combine well but don't overmix. Set in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Now make the cookie dough. Pop the butter and sugars in a food processor and blitz until like sand. Add the flour, vanilla extract, egg, salt and baking powder and pulse until it starts to come together.

Tip into a bowl, add the sprinkles and chocolate chips and press together. Wrap and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Pre-heat the oven to 160C.

Take ice cream scoop sized balls of the cookie dough and flatten them slightly. Then scoop about 1tsp of chilled brownie mix out of that bowl, form into a loose ball and place in the centre of each cookie. Wrap the dough around the brownie mix so it's concealed then press the cookie down with your hand until it's about 1cm thick.

Line three trays and space out five cookies on each. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes (this depends on the efficiency of your oven) until they're golden at the very edges, but still a little pale in the centre.

Remove the trays to racks and allow to cool for 20 minutes before removing the cookies from their trays to cool fully.