Thursday Feasts #1 - M+M cookies

Welcome to one of my new features! Every Thursday I will be showing you guys something I've cooked or baked in the last week. And to start, we have these wonderful cookies that I made these for my boyfriend to take into work with him and I have to say, they are the best cookies I've ever made! They're really chewy and as you can see, kept their shape fantastically.

Om nom nom. I made a batch of 16 and there are only 5 left... The recipe is very simple. And here it is...

Adapted from All Recipes

Best M+M cookies

Ingredients:

• 2 cups plain flour
• A pinch of salt
• A pinch of baking powder
• 3/4 cups of melted butter or margarine
• 3/4 cups of golden caster sugar  (I took out the brown sugar from the original recipe as I don't like the strong taste of it. If you don't mind, then sub it back in.)
• 1/2 cup of white caster sugar
• 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract (Alternatively, if you have it, you can use vanilla flavoured caster sugar and skip this)
• 1 whole egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 3/4s of a sharing bag of M+Ms = reduce if you want more cookie to M+M ratio!*

Method:

Oven temp: 160 degrees C 

1. Combine the dry ingredients into one bowl and set aside. Melt the butter. Combine sugars in a big bowl.
2. Pour the melted butter over the sugars and mix until it seems to be fully combined/not very grainy.
3. Add in the whole egg, egg yolk and vanilla extract if you're using it and combine again until light and creamy.
4. Sift in the dry ingredients and stir/fold until just combined. Add in your M+Ms and mix again.
5. Grab a baking tray and portion out cookie dough onto the sheet (no need to grease) roughly 3 inches apart. Put the tray in the freezer for five minutes.
6. Take the tray out of the freezer and bake for 6 minutes to 10 minutes. They're done when they start to go golden brown around the outside. When you take them out, leave them on the oven tray for fifteen minutes before removing them to cool.

*I used a whole bag of M+Ms and there really were too many. I also recommend roughly bashing half the M+Ms so that you get a nice difference in texture and more colour 'oomph'.

Now, number 5 is an odd instruction but it makes a lot of sense; cookies rely on the butter and binding ingredients in them being cold to keep their shape. If you've ever made cookies before you'll know that warm cookies spread incredibly quickly and lose their shape rapidly - they go thin and greasy. This stops this totally! You don't want to freeze them completely, just make sure that they're cold to the touch. When they go into the oven cold they cook through fast and don't have the temperature needed to 'dissolve' onto the tray.

You really can't beat one of these with a cup of steaming hot fresh tea. If you leave them on the saucer they warm up and go all gooey again!

Tea and a biscuit, that Great British institution!

Graze Box

I had these when I was at uni (the first time I went, and last year as well) and I've always been impressed with what I got so when I got an email telling me I could get a box free again I jumped on it!

For those who aren't in the know, a graze box looks like this:

And contains four punnets of healthy treats and snacks like this:

In my box today I got 'Tutti frutti', 'My Thai', 'Strawberry Milkshake' and 'Carrot Cake with Afternoon Tea'. The point of a graze box is that you get healthy snacks to enjoy across your day and you reach for them rather than a packet of crisps or chocolate bar (even though some of the snacks contain chocolate too!). For those watching their weight, it's great as you can read the nutritional information for each punnet in the leaflet you get inside your box (not pictured) and you can eat what you want of it, when you want it! I imagine if I worked a desk job that this would be invaluable as having something to snack on that's easy and healthy is a must! In fact when I was at uni and writing essays I used to have a one of the seed-y graze punnets at hand to snack on.

So far I've tried the carrot cake and afternoon tea infusion; the carrot cake was SO moist and tasty, the pumpkin seeds add a little crunch on top and the texture was just perfect. I wish I could make carrot cake as good as that! It also proves that you don't need fatty cream cheese toppings to make a carrot cake great. The infusion was lovely and I could see it becoming a tea I need to put on my shopping list. If you're having a stressful day at work what better way to relax than to sit back for five minutes with a piece of lovely moist carrot cake and a cup of relaxing, musty tea?

If you want to try a graze box for yourself, you can try them free with the code 3JY1CHPD; just go to Graze, fill your details in and the code (in step 3) and you'll get your box! The system is totally flexible, you can have as many or as few as you want - I get one a week but you could have one a day, one a fortnight, one a month! Or you can just try your first one and then turn deliveries off so you don't get any more. You don't get charged for boxes you don't get sent and the customer service is great so don't be worried about it. If you've tried them in the past but cancelled them it's worth checking your account to see whether you're eligible for a free one to entice you back!

How does Graze give you foods you like/what if you're a picky eater? Well, don't worry because the first thing you do is rate the products that Graze has; with either 'bin it' (it'll never be sent to you), 'try it' (try it once), 'like it' (send it again) or 'love it' (send it as often as possible. The products range from cakes to dipping crackers, from dried fruit medleys in any flavour you can imagine to seed punnets flavoured with juices and wonderfully exciting things like that. You can specify if you want a product to be sent every time or if you want it to be completely random - and if you're a picky eater what better way to get yourself to try new foods?

Unfortunately Graze is not currently safe for those with nut or sesame allergies due to the environment that they pack the punnets in - I'm hoping that this will change soon though!

Let me know what you think about Graze - do you already get graze boxes or have you tried them before? What do you think of the product range? If you do go ahead and get one, let me know what you think! Don't forget to use the code above if you do go for it!