Gooey, chocolatey, nutty heaven — sometimes we just deserve it. This indulgent cake is an easy crowd-pleaser and a fun one to make with children, especially over Easter weekend.
Sometimes it feels as though we’ve all got a bit caught up in ‘clean eating’ and that it’s taken all the fun out of food. For us it’s about balance: living well and eating well. Fresh, seasonal dishes make us happy and it’s what we crave most of the time. But we also crave pasta, cheesy numbers and, occasionally, a damn good cookie cake. On this occasion it’s only right to go all in and throw ‘clean’ eating out the window.
We’ve been talking about making a cookie cake for years, ever since Jemima first came to stay at Lucy’s in Northumberland and her mum had freshly baked an extra-large cookie cake, Lucy’s favourite. Jemima loved it instantly. It has been a staple in the larder at Lucy’s since she was little, always the same simple, milk chocolate-chip-cookie recipe.
When it comes to baking a cookie cake you have a couple of options. You can either spread the mixture on a baking tray, bake and then leave to cool, then cut up into snack-sized pieces (it keeps well), or load it into a skillet, bake, and serve hot from the oven as a dessert with good quality vanilla ice cream. Mix it up by using milk, white or dark chocolate; changing the peanut butter for almond; or swapping the banana for dried apricots or sultanas. If you’re making this over Easter, you could also swap the chocolate for Cadbury Mini Eggs.
Recipe
Serves 4
150g soft brown sugar
75g caster sugar
175g butter, softened
225g plain flour
1 heaped tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg plus one extra yolk
50g chunky peanut butter
200g milk or dark chocolate, chopped into chunks
1 banana, chopped into chunks
Sea salt
Ice cream to serve
Method
Pre-heat the oven to 180C.
Place the sugar and butter into a large bowl and, using an electric mixer, beat for a couple of minutes until light and fluffy.
Add the flour, bicarbonate of soda, vanilla and egg and combine.
Fold in the peanut butter, banana and chocolate.
Place into one large or four small, heavy-based, oven-proof pans.
For a rectangular cake, a baking tray is fine. Bake for about 15 minutes until golden, let cool slightly and sprinkle with sea salt.
Serve with ice cream.
