Cherry, chocolate, cornflake and coconut cookies (the everything cookie)

These are unmistakably homemade cookies. They’ve got that chunkiness to them, and randomness of ingredients like cornflakes and cherries, that no mass producing cookie company would ever market.

The cafes around Melbourne seem to be doing away with making cookies themselves and instead put packaged cookies in jars, distributed from wholesalers. This is rubbish and makes me want to stand, hand on hip, and tell then I won’t be spending $3.50 on a cookie today and not to look at me that way ‘coz they know damn well why.

Packaged cookies are good in their own right. I love Oreos and Mint Slices A LOT. But I buy them from the supermarket. Not the café. I take cookies seriously.

And these are serious cookies. Quite sweet. Good amount of crunch. Difficult to stir, but worth the effort.

Speaking of homemade, I wanted to share this happy snap from my Christmas this year. We were on dessert duty and my boyfriend got a fondue fountain in his work secret santa, so we bought a whole lot of random things – fruit, donuts, I made crepes – and dipped them in old school style. My brother even dipped a fruit mince pie in.

It’s a tenuous link, but I feel it backs up my argument about how random homemade stuff can be awesome. And shop stuff is also awesome. But each has its place. And cafes should start offering lovely chunky, unsymmetrical homemade cookies again before I turn into a blue fuzzy Sesame Street character and monosyllabically start demanding them.

I also recommend following the cookie monster on Twitter. Hi-lar-ious.

Ingredients
125 grams butter, softened
2/3 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 egg
1 cup wholemeal plain flour
1/2 cup SR flour
1 cup cornflakes
1 cup desiccated coconut
1/2 cup maraschino (glace) cherries
1 cup (200 grams) dark chocolate (milk choc will make it sweeter and they are already sweet cookies)

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 180C, line a couple of baking trays with baking paper.
2. Cream the butter and sugar with electric beaters in a large bowl.
3. Mix in the vanilla essence and gradually add the egg, beating well.
4. Add the flours and fold into the batter.
5. Stir in the coconut, cherries and dark chocolate chips. Then carefully fold in the cornflakes.
6. Roll into balls, or drop level tablespoons of the cookie mixture onto the baking tray, leaving about 4cm between each cookie.
7. Press down firmly with a floured fork. Makes ‘em look all professional like. They don’t spread much, so squish them good.
8. Bake for 10 minutes, turning the tray around half way through. They’re done when the bottom of them is just turning brown. They’re nice soft, so don’t overcook.
9. Cool on a wire rack.

Healthy: If you make 30, they’re 140 calories a cookie.

Storage: In a cookie tin, mine kept for a couple of weeks and were still fresh.

Makes: 24-30 depending on the size you make them