These cookies are packed with three types of chocolate, sweetened with good quality vanilla, with a touch of salt for that true addictive quality. Great with a cup of tea or coffee for a mid morning snack (or as a sugar rush when you're late first thing as I often am), it's a struggle to contain yourself to just one.

Step 1: Ingredients and Equipment

This recipe makes around 16-20 cookies, depending on your scoop size.

Ingredients:

170 g unsalted butter
100 g caster sugar
200 g light brown/light muscovado sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla essence
250 g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp salt
100 g white chocolate
100 g milk chocolate
100 g dark chocolate

Equipment:

Large mixing bowl
Wooden spoon/Spatula
Measuring cups/scales
Measuring spoons
Chopping board & a sharp knife
Baking trays and parchment
Cookie scoop if you have one, or a couple of tablespoons
Cooling rack
An oven, preheated to 180 C/350 F/Gas 4

(An electric mixer will make your life easier, but if you've got a fairly strong arm a wooden spoon will do just as well)

For anyone without scales, a good weight to volume conversion guide can be found here.

Step 2: Chocolate

First, chop up all of the chocolate into small chunks. You could use chocolate chips instead to make your life easier, but I like the irregularity of hand chopped pieces, and the way the stray shavings make their way through all of the cookie dough, spreading chocolate through every bite.

Step 3: Butter & Sugar

Soften the butter in the microwave. Put both of the sugars into a large mixing bowl, then add the butter. Beat together the butter and sugar until they are well combined.

Step 4: Egg & Vanilla

Add the egg, egg yolk and vanilla into the mixture and beat again until everything is well combined.

Step 5: Dry Ingredients

Now add the flour, bicarb and salt. Mix by hand until the flour is combined and a dough has formed.

Tip in the chocolate chips and mix these in well.

Step 6: Baking

Scoop the cookie dough out onto lined baking sheets, making sure to leave plenty of space between each scoop for spreading.

If you have a (handily stolen from work) cookie scoop, spoon out large dollops onto the sheet. For neater cookies you can shape these into balls with your hands, though it's a bit of a messy job.

Bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes, until they are spread and golden, but not hard; you want them gooey and chewy in the middle.

Remove from the oven, leave to cool for 5 minutes, then move onto a cooling rack to cool completely, (if you can resist).

Eat!

Step 7: Variations

This cookie dough recipe can be easily adapted for any other flavour, simply replace the 300 g chocolate with any other ingredients you fancy. Some of my favourites are:

Dark Chocolate & Ginger - add 2 tsp ground ginger to the dough, use 225 g chopped dark chocolate & 75 g chopped crystallised ginger

Milk Chocolate & Peanut Butter - use 150 g chopped milk chocolate, 150 g crunchy peanut butter

Triple Dark Chocolate Chip - substitute 75 g of the plain flour for cocoa powder, use 300 g of your favourite type of chocolate, chopped

Mayan Chocolate Chip- add 1 tsp ginger, 1/2 tsp cinammon, 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper, zest of one orange, use 300 g of spiced chocolate (such as Green & Black's Maya Gold), chopped