Addicted after three bites: bake these Smarties cookies today

There’s a pile of laundry waiting, I have a mountain of paperwork to deal with and the car needs to go in for its roadworthiness test, but instead of sensibly and maturely doing all those chores, I’m much more in the mood for Smarties cookies. I’m afraid I’m addicted: I’ve already baked a full tin three times, and every time it’s empty again within a day. The recipe is simple, the accompanying video is brilliant and the cookies are a-ma-zing.

Starting every day with a video of junior chef Kobe is a great recipe for a cheerful breakfast, because the little boy is funny and makes delicious things together with his mother. When they made cookies with M&Ms, most of the ingredients ended up in his mouth rather than in the batter, but that didn’t matter: the cookies looked so cute that I wanted to bake more than I wanted to put out the green bin, descale the coffee machine and send invoices.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CBEn6Ech6c4/

Why not use white chocolate and macadamia nuts?

I baked the cookies with Smarties instead of M&M’s, simply because I happened to have those sweets in stock. When I tasted the first batch, I immediately thought of the delicious white chocolate and macadamia cookies you could buy at Coffee Company. Soft and gooey on the inside, with crispy edges: simply perfect. A great reason to replace the Smarties in this recipe with chocolate and nuts. Another experiment: add some cocoa powder to the batter and use chopped dark chocolate in the cookies instead of Smarties. Oh yes! Chocolate chip, and delicious too.

How to make Smarties cookies

• Preheat the oven to 175 degrees.
• Mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt, and set aside for a moment.
• Beat the butter until soft and light with the brown sugar and granulated sugar.
• Add the egg and vanilla sugar to the batter.
• Now add the flour mixture to the mixing bowl and beat well.
• Set aside a handful of Smarties, add the rest to the batter and stir through.
• Place baking paper on the oven rack. Put mounds of batter on the paper, using an ice cream scoop or two spoons, for example. Make more or less round mounds, but they don’t need to be neat. The cookies spread a little, so leave enough space between the mounds of cookie dough. You may need to bake two batches. This amount of dough makes 18 to 20 cookies.
• Press the reserved Smarties onto the tops of the cookies.
• Bake in the oven for nine to eleven minutes. They will still be soft when they come out of the oven, but the edges will have darkened slightly. Leave them in the oven longer if you want brown, crisp cookies like the ones in the photo.
• Remove from the oven and leave to cool on the rack for at least an hour. Then store in a cookie tin.

Also read:

• Queen Máxima bakes cookies for her birthday, and this is her recipe
• Recipe: chocolate halva cookies
• Pink cookies with raspberries