Baking for Beginners: Mini Egg Chocolate Cookies

Cadbury Mini Eggs. God love 'em, they seem like such a bargain before the Easter break. You can buy a hundred-weight for the price of a discount bottle of rosé, but my gosh do they hang around.

The problem is, once you've seen beautiful chocolate eggs and swooned over their fancy charms, the humble Mini Egg doesn't seem quite so enticing.

Never fear. This recipe will use them up in one fell, chocolatey swoop. In fact, that goes for any hang-around chocolate. Smarties would be work perfectly, as would M&Ms, Revels, chocolate raisins, nuts... anything that takes your fancy really. Just smash it up with the rolling pin and throw it in. Although if you're eyeing a left-over bag of crisps, I recommend you head over to Laura B's recipe.

These cookies are a piece of cake, (groan) so are perfect for baking fun with little people over the long weekend: even if that does mean some seriously chocolately faces/hands/clothes. The recipe is based on Mary Berry's Giant Cookies. In my opinion, a big biscuit is always a welcome biscuit, but for kids you can reduce the size, and thus the likelihood of sugar rushes.

Mini Egg Chocolate Cookies (makes 6-8 huge or 10-14 small)
You will need:
For the cookies

• 125g unsalted butter, room temperature
• 75g caster sugar
• 75g brown sugar
• ½ tsp vanilla extract
• 1 free-range egg, lightly beaten
• 1 tbsp cream cheese
• 100g plain flour
• ½ tsp baking powder
• 2 tbsp cocoa powder
• 100g Cadbury Mini Eggs

For the topping (optional)

• 75g milk chocolate
• More Mini Eggs, to decorate

Make it!
The cookies:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4. Line a baking tray with baking parchment or greaseproof paper, and grease lightly. 
2. Cream together the butter and both sugars until pale and fluffy. 
3. Add the vanilla extract and the egg and beat well to combine. 
4. Stir in the tablespoon of cream cheese. 
5. Add half the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder to the mixture, and fold in using a metal spoon. When combined, add the other half of the flour and fold in again. 
6. Place the Mini Eggs in a ziplock bag - unless you've resisted opening the packet - and break up into small pieces using a rolling pin, ladle, shoe, mallet or whatever is handy. (Mind fingers!)
7. Stir the pieces into the cookie mixture. 
8. Scoop out the dough and roll into a rough ball using your hands, about the size of a tennis ball for giant cookies, a golf ball for smaller ones. 
9. Place on the baking sheet and flatten slightly, leaving a good three or four inches of space between them to expand. 
10. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until the edges are starting to crisp and the middles have set. 
11. Place the cookies on a wire rack to cool. Try not to burn your tongue by eating them straight out of the oven.* 

The topping:

1. Break the chocolate into small pieces and place in a microwaveable bowl. Melt in 20 second blasts. 
2. Smother, drizzle or splodge over the cookies, depending on how lazy you're feeling.
3. Decorate with whole or crushed Mini Eggs.

* A lesson learned the hard way...