Macadamia and cranberry cookies, and chocolate chunk cookies

As with most offices, if it's your birthday or you get promoted (as in my case), it is etiquette to bring in naughty treats. Now, both my bosses are quite wonderful at baking, so I felt obliged to have a go myself. You may have noticed that I haven't posted any sweet recipes on my blog yet, and there is a very good reason for that. I'm very inexperienced when it comes to baking, but I'm willing to give anything a go, so I tried three (bit ambitious) types of cookie. One was a complete disaster. When trying to make cinnamon and raisin cookies I got through half of one recipe, realised I didn't have half of the ingredients, so swapped to another. I didn't however think to look at the difference in butter and sugar, or how many cookies it made, and my new recipe ended up having three times the amount of butter and sugar than it should have. They turned out rather flat and ugly, but funny enough they were the first to go at work. Human instinct once again makes us go for the most overly fatty sugary thing on offer.

Another couple of recipes inspired by BBC Good Food. I definitely lied in my first post when I said I don't follow recipes...
Macadamia and cranberry American cookies
Gooey chocolate cherry cookies
Neither look anything like the original recipe.... oh well, I tried

Macadamia and cranberry cookies

200g butter
2 eggs
100g light muscovado sugar
175g golden caster sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
350g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
100g dried cranberries
100g macadamia nuts , chopped

1. Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Beat in the butter, eggs, sugars and vanilla, preferably with an electric hand whisk, until creamy. Stir in the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and cranberries and macadamias, to make a stiff dough.
2. Using a tablespoon measure or a small ice-cream scoop, drop small mounds onto a large baking dish, spacing them well apart, then poke in the nuts and berries. Bake in batches for 12 mins until pale golden, leave to harden for 1-2 mins, then cool on a wire rack.

Milk and dark chocolate chunk cookies

 Makes 20 cookies
200g unsalted butter , at room temperature
85g light muscovado sugar
85g golden caster sugar
1 egg
225g self-raising flour
100g plain chocolate , 50-70% cocoa, roughly chopped
100g milk chocolate , roughly chopped

1. Heat oven to 190C/fan 170C/gas 5. Beat the butter, sugars and egg until smooth, then mix in the flour, chocolate and ½ tsp salt. Spoon onto non-stick baking sheets in large rough blobs. Make sure they are well spaced as the cookies grow substantially as they bake. The raw dough can be frozen.
2. Bake for 12-14 mins until just golden, but still quite pale and soft in the middle. If baking from frozen, give them a few mins more. Cool on the sheets for 5 mins, then lift onto racks and leave to cool completely.