Easy Eggless Choco-Vanilla Cookies

Easy Eggless Choco-Vanilla Cookies

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"If I hear "I'm hungry" one more time, I'm going to check myself into a nearby hotel and switch off my mobile phone!"

 That's me telling my four year old, who tells me he's hungry every 15 minutes and the minute I rustle up something, he conveniently forgets about his hunger and runs off to rebuild a Lego castle for the 500th time. But yesterday, I went out for a beautiful wine evening at The Sheraton #socialhour- it's when people at Sheraton Hotels around the world come together for a toast at the decided time. What's more, the wine served at each hotel across the world is from the same winery, for that week. After multiple cabernet sauvignons & rieslings, a good night's sleep at my cousin's place & breakfast with a wonderful friend at the legendary Veena Stores, I'd had enough of me time and couldn't wait to get back home to my mischief monger boy. So today, when he said "I want cookies, mummy" - my guilt pushed me faster than a runaway train to start the oven and then think of something to bake on the spur of the moment.


It started with creaming some butter & sugar, added flour and one thing led to the other. I ended up with these oh-so-cute brown & cream cookies. When I posted the pics on Twitter & Saffrontrail FB page, I was goaded into doing this quick post on how I made them. I'm sorry I'm unable to provide very exact measurements, I hope it's very close to the quantities I've used. Anyway cookies aren't as unforgiving as cakes, so they should turn out okay! They only take 20 minutes, and I promise it will make your child (or the inner child in you) smile :-)

Recipe for Half & Half Cookies
Takes under 30 minutes
Roughly 30 cookies of ~ 2" diameter

Ingredients
4 heaped tbsp soft unsalted butter (if salted, reduce the salt by a pinch)
1/2 cup sugar + 1/2 tsp sea salt - pulsed in mixer for few seconds
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract or powder
1/2 cup all purpose flour (maida)
1/2 cup whole wheat flour (atta)
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp cocoa powder
few tsp cold water 
1-2 tsp cold milk

Directions

1. Preheat oven at 180 C.
2. Line a big baking tray with tin foil or parchment.
3. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar-salt mix with a spoon for 2 minutes, adding in the vanilla extract, until well combined.
4. Sift the flours and baking powder together on a sheet of paper or mix it with a fork in a bowl and add it to the creamed mix.
5. Mix well until it forms a dough, adding 1-2 tsp of cold water or milk to bind, if required.
6. Divide roughly in half. Keep one half aside. To the other half, add the cocoa powder, a few drops of cold milk and knead gently to make a smooth but stiff dough (or you cant slice them).
7. Now you'll have two rounds of dough, one white and one brown.
8. Divide each into two logs, to get two white logs and two brown logs.
9. Join one white log and one choco log and roll into a log on a clean smooth surface. It's not necessary, that the white and brown parts are exactly half and half, don't stress out over this-just make sure each log as some white and some brown.
10. At this stage you could refrigerate for 15 mins or so and then slice into 1.5 cm thick slices or go ahead without chilling.
11. Place each slice on the baking tray leaving some space between each cookie.
12. Bake at 180C for 10-12 minutes, until the white parts start turning golden. At this point they will still be very soft, so don't overbake. They will crisp up as they cool
13. For chewy cookies, remove them a little earlier.

Note
You can bake as many as you want at a time and freeze the remaining logs / slices to bake as and when required. You dont need to thaw the dough. Slice frozen dough and bake as it is in a preheated oven-adding 1-2 minutes extra for fresh cookies on demand :)

What people who tried this have to say!

Cookie making debut. Made choco-vanilla cookies for the wife and kids. instagram.com/p/ZdS0Gnpeog/
— Obstetrix (@ScissorTongue) May 18, 2013

@saffrontrail wow luks super.. hey i made the kung fu panda cookies today.. turned out well :) thks for making my kid happy too :)
— sowmya (@vishalsowmya) May 17, 2013