Chocolate and Ginger Oaty Cookies

It's my Grandad's birthday and since I won't be seeing him for a few more weeks I wanted to send him home-baked something in the post. I also wanted to make something I could enter in We Should Cocoa, where this month's theme was ginger (and chocolate) so I looked online and found a recipe for chocolate and ginger cookies, which I adapted slightly. I probably should have halved the recipe as well as I ended up with a lot of cookies - about 20 large ones - and as there were too many to fit into the posting box, I had to sample a few. I can happily vouch for the fact that these cookies are very nice!

I got the original recipe from the BBC Food website. You can find it here.

For my adapted recipe, you need:

(And it may be worth considering halving the quantities)

225g butter

100g golden syrup

200g brown sugar

150g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

4 tsp ground ginger

2 tsp ground cinnamon

400g rolled oats

100g bag Dr Oetker chocolate chunks

2 eggs

175g crystallised ginger

300g dark chocolate

Heat the butter and golden syrup in a small pan until melted

Mix the brown sugar, flour, baking powder, salt, ginger and cinnamon

Stir in the rolled oats. It looks like a lot at this stage but trust me, it works!

Mix in the melted butter and golden syrup. At this point the mixture tastes exactly like Hob Nobs!

Though this wasn't in the original recipe, I decided to add in a bag of Dr. Oetker chocolate chunks I was sent for review. These come in a 100g bag and are widely available in supermarkets.

I was expecting these to be like chocolate chips but instead they are almost square-shaped chunks and made of a tasty dark chocolate. I like the fact that they are bigger than chocolate chips.

Next beat two eggs then add to the cookie mixture.

The recipe called for stem ginger but I couldn't find any in my local supermarket, so got this crystallised ginger from a health food shop instead.

Chop it into pieces and add to the cookie mixture

Shape into balls and press down onto a greased and lined baking tray

Bake at 180C for about 15 minutes; they may need longer depending on the size of the cookie.

Melt some chocolate; I used a small deep dish as this was easier for dippping.

Dip half of each cookie into the chocolate and allow to set on a wire rack

You can see how well the Dr. Oetker chocolate chunks hold their shape inside the cookie. I will definitely use these again!

I packaged these up in a box I bought from the Post Office to send to my Grandad

I also added some Palmiers I had made the day before, and of course a birthday card.

I'm sending these to We Should Cocoa, the blog challenge created by Choclette of Chocolate Log Blog and Chele of Chocolate Tea Pot.  This month the guest host is Jen of Blue Kitchen Bakes and she has chosen ginger as the ingredient.