Dark Chocolate and Macadamia Cookies and Meatball Stew

So I've been wanting to make this dark chocolate and macadamia cookie recipe for months now. I saw it many moons ago in some woman's magazine like Woman's Weekly or something. We get these magazines all the time at my workplace and we normally get given them by patients once they are done with them. The only issue is that when it comes to recipes, they normally go missing.

This is because some scum bags at work like to rip out the recipe instead of photocopying it or taking a photo like a civilised human being. You hardly deserve to be called ladies, and I hope that the recipe was fantastic and you fail badly at it. I always feel so annoyed when I see the recipes have been ripped out because it means it must've been good enough, and by the low standards of my workplace, easy enough for someone to pull off and still look good.

Dark Chocolate and Macademia Cookies

Super delicious

Uses: bribing house mates, study rewards, nurse fodder.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup of sifted cocoa

1/2 cup of brown sugar

1/2 cup of white sugar

250g of cubed butter

1 beaten egg

1/2 cup and 1/2 cup of sifted SR flour and plain flour. Or use 1 cup plain and a tbsp of baking powder

1 cup of halved roasted macademias

150g of good dark chocolate or cooking chocolate

Seems like a lot of ingredients, but its not!

Note:

I didn't use milk in this recipe at all. I thought I was going to but decided on a mostly shortbread style biscuit, which doesn't require any milk. I'm never a fan of using plain flour and baking powder, so I normally use weird ratios of SR and plain flour.

Instructions:

1. Preheat an oven to 180C while you are doing all this. Line several baking trays with baking paper

2. Whiz together the sifted cocoa, sugars and butter together until creamy brown paste is formed.

Simple!

3. Scrape out the mixture and mix in the beaten egg

4. Begin sifting the flour onto the mixture, don't be shy, tap it.

There is an egg somewhere under that

5. Mix briefly until no white parts remain, but don't overmix or it gets weird and starchy.

Nice and smooth

6. Mix in the macademias and dark chocolate. Don't overmix, just mix until just combined

Good enough

7. Space far away from each other, a small 50c piece sized ball of dough, flatten slightly and continue. Or do it however you want, its a cookie, its going to get eaten not admired

This will not end well. They turned into a flower, see the top image :)

8. Bake for 10-15 minutes to desired consistency. They will firm up once cooled down, but will be very crumbly until then. 

On the day that we made this, my Boyfriend's housemates were cat calling us all evening, trying to score some cookies. We left the plate out overnight and he said in the morning there was a hand written sign saying, "OMG I ALMOST HAD ONE, SO TEMPTING." He promptly printed out a sign of this:

Her response was: OMG BEST RESPONSE EVER. Then when we left the house half the plate went missing haha.

As usual, I made a savoury dish but this time it was as more of an afterthought since I really wanted to make the cookies first and foremost. This is just a basic meatball stew/soup recipe cobbled together that I normally make for lunches in winter. Change/adapt to whatever is in your kitchen but here is my basic recipe. Its not the fanciest thing in the world, but its cheap, filling and smells delicious, and nearly everyone has this stuff in their pantry.

Meatball Soup

Uses: warm belly lunches. Making salad eating nurses jealous.

Meatball recipe:

Ingredients:

500kg beef/chicken/pork/veal mince

1 small onion, diced
2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
1/4 cup of tasty cheese
1 large egg, beaten
Salt and pepper to taste

All the ingredients in one!

1. Mix all this stuff together

Before

After

2. Make small 50c piece sized balls or whatever shape you want. Squeeze them hard like you're strangling your worst enemy

Nice. Also a wild hairy foot is spotted!

3. Put in the fridge for at least 15 minutes so they hold their shape,
4. Briefly fry them in hot oil until golden brown edged

Mmm meatballs. Ignore burnt bits, they will add flavour to your soup!

5. Set aside and begin making soup

Soup recipe:
1 large onion, sliced/diced
2-3 cloves of garlic, minced

2x 500g cans of diced tomato

1x 500g can of 4 bean mix

2x carrots, sliced
1 large potato, scrubbed, diced
1 small capsicum, diced
1tbsp Tomato paste
500ml-1L of chicken stock
1tbsp mixed herbs
Salt/Pepper/Brown Sugar/Balsamic Vinegar to taste

Ingredients:

1. Brown off the onion on a medium heat until slightly browned

2. Throw in your garlic and stir until you can smell cooked garlic

3. Throw in everything hard, like potatoes, carrots, all your canned goods and all your stock. Bring to the boil. Hard herbs go in now as well.

Classy.

Overcrowding ftw

4. Remember to skim off scum. Reduce to a simmer until the potato begins to soften, throw in meatballs and softer vegetables such as mushrooms, capsicum and friends

SKIM SKIM

5. This is the time for seasoning with salt, pepper, sugar, balsamic vinegar and soft herbs if wanted.

Lastly, here is a picture of the first blog related injury sustained in the kitchen.

Poor darling.

What happened? Well the can opener I picked out was apparently one of the two dodgy ones in my Boyfriend's share house and it doesn't maintain equal pressure when being used. So I had to keep repuncturing the can. Once I failed to open it, I called in my Boyfriend and he got out his actual can opener which works, and did another go around the can, which resulted in this razor sharp second ring on the can. He then pried out the fallen in ring and flicked it up against his thumb quite deeply. Thanks for taking one for the team darling :)