Chocolate lava cookies

These are great treats, for special occasions, for taking along on picnics and hikes, on holidays and for lunch boxes.

They contain a lot of chocolate, yet they are not too sweet.

When you bring your children up on home-made sweet treats, they will look for these standards of sweetness and quality when they step out into the world. You would have given them a good anchor point. It will help them judge what to eat and what to avoid.

Your children will also know what real chocolate is like.

You’ll need:

• 200 g flour
• 200 g walnuts or freshly roasted hazelnuts, coarsely ground
• 100 g dark chocolate (70% cacao), in small pieces
• 100 g butter
• 60 g sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking powder (optional)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
• 4-6 tbsp milk, as necessary

Steps:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients together with a spoon, excluding the chocolate. We will need this later.
2. Add butter and milk. Mix with a spoon until it comes together.
3. Add a tablespoon or two extra milk as the flour will absorb more moisture over time. It’s ok if it looks a bit sticky.
4. Place in the fridge for at least half an hour. This will make the dough easier to handle. If you leave it in for very long, it will become too hard. Then you will have to let it rest at room temperature before using.
5. Make twelve equal sized balls. If you are still new to working in the kitchen, use a scale and weigh out about 55g for each cookie.
6. Flatten each ball, place some chocolate into each and wrap it in the dough. Flatten again. These are big, rather thick cookies.
7. Bake at 180 degrees for 12-15 minutes
8. Serve warm, to enjoy the lava.

It’s best to finish these within 24 hours.

I prefer 70% dark chocolate. You can try chocolate with higher amounts of cacao. They will add more of a bitter element to the cookies. Any chocolate with less than 70% cacao is far too sweet. Also thinking in terms of the baseline we would like our children to experience early in life, using dark chocolate and as little sugar as possible makes sense.

Try a batch with cinnamon.

Enjoy in moderation and until the early afternoon.