Another year and another Valentines day has come and gone. Every year I seem to say ‘next year it will be different’, it never really is… except this year. I didn’t spend the time alone, pondering, telling myself it’s just another day, telling myself that there is no point going out amongst all of the people brandishing roses and gifts for their loved ones. This year I decided to just, well, treat it as another day.

It was after-all another weekend and should be treated as just that, a time to just do normal weekend stuff. I spent the day with a friend (read that correctly Mum, ‘friend’… although female not ‘girl-friend,’ so no questions please) throughly enjoying myself at Borough Markets, pushing through throngs of people, smelling amazing smells, seeing beautiful colours, tasting tasty things. This was followed by the enjoyment of wondering through National Portrait gallery, a brief walk through China Town and then cooking and eating a fine meal and having wondrous discussions about everything and anything.  

After such a nice day I decided to spend the morning in bed on the Sunday following pondering the day before and what it all means in the grand scheme of things. I decided that in the spirit of my highly positive and fun start to 2009 I would come up with a bit of a thought for the day, a mantra I guess one could call it, a way to live and think, I decided upon the following: ‘There’s A Place For Love’. 

Keeping with this mantra and ideal I decided that the day would be spent doing things that I, quite simply, love to do. I decided a good way of going about this would be to combine two things I do love: Chocolate and cooking (well baking if your being picky), problem solved.

Thus I give you my results of my thinking and doings of Valentines day (and the sunday after) 2009: a recipe for amazingly good ‘Place For Love Double Chocolate Cookies’. They are nice and chewy inside and crunchy out side, just like they should be, mmm. (I kind of made this up as I went along so quantities may need to be adjusted ever so slightly to achieve optimal results… maybe I was just lucky because they tasted ace!)

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups of self-raising flour
2/3 cup Cocoa (Green and Blacks Organic is by far my favorite)
pinch of salt
3/4 cup of butter
1/2 cup Caster Sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 large egg
Splash of milk if it needs a little more liquid
Small to medium block of white chocolate, bashed with a rolling pin to make large-ish chunks.

Mix it all up!

Cream the butter and sugar until silky. Mix in the egg and all of the remaining dry ingredients. I don’t bother sifting the flour and the cocoa, mainly because we don’t have a sift but I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt.

Mix well until it forms a bit of a thick, pasty, smooth texture. I had to use a couple of drops of milk to achieve this as it was a little dry to begin with. Mix in the crushed white chocolate chunks. I don’t bother using a wooden spoon at this point and prefer to get my hands all gooey, get dirty, its more fun!

Take a piece of mixture and roll it into a golf-ball sized ball and place onto a sheet of baking paper on an oven tray. Flatten with the palm of your hand until the ‘cookie’ is about 15mm thick. Fill up the baking tray and pop into the oven at 180°c for about 10 minutes. At 10 minutes remove from the oven and gently flatten a little more with a fork until cracks appear at the edge of the cookie. Place back into the oven for a further 5 minutes.

lick the bowl, lick your fingers and Enjoy!