Chocolate And Apricot Chip Cookies

Do you like baking with your kids? Generally, I do not. I really want to let them help, to get them interested in baking and to experience the fun of turning a few simple innocent-looking ingredients into something amazingly tasty. But they’re too messy, and while I’m trying to keep them from pouring a whole bottle of vanilla extract into the butter/sugar/egg mixture, I lose track of how much baking powder I just added to the flour mixture! So I generally try to occupy the kids with something else while I bake.

However, while my daughter was at preschool last week, I decided to enlist the help of my 2-year-old son to help me make an interesting-looking recipe on the back of a bag of dried apricots. The recipe was for chocolate and apricot chip cookies; like a chocolate chip cookie with chopped dried apricots.

And do you know what? Blake did an amazing job with helping me. To be honest, this was the first time I let my son help me bake. He’s generally a tornado and destroys everything in sight, from toys to books, from CD and DVD cases to kitchen cabinets, you name it, so I thought that if there was any child I would not allow in the kitchen to help me bake, it would be this boy. But I felt extra patient that day and decided to give it a go.

He was more than happy to help. I measured out the ingredients, and he poured them into the bowl as needed. He stirred the flour into the dough and mixed in the chocolate chips and apricots. He was so proud.

His cookies were really nice. They were sort of cakey and chewy, definitely not crunchy. The apricots were an interesting addition, and one that Blake didn’t actually like that well in the end.

I bought some sea salt for my chocolate salted dulce de leche cupcakes a couple of weeks ago and since I had seen chocolate chip cookies with a sprinkling of sea salt on other blogs, I decided to try a sprinkling of it on these cookies. It was an addition that I could have done without, although some sea salt fans might appreciate it.

They weren’t quite as good the next day and I thought they benefited from being warmed up in microwave for a few seconds. The cookies are very easy to make and I would definitely recommend them if you’d like to try a nice variation on the chocolate chip cookie.

Chocolate And Apricot Chip Cookies
Adapted from the back of a Sunbeam Foods Turkish Apricots bag
Makes approximately 1 1/2 dozen

Ingredients
3/4 cup Sunbeam Dried Apricots, diced
100g butter, softened
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup milk or dark choc bits

Method
Cream butter and sugar in a mixing bowl until light and creamy. Add egg and vanilla essence and beat well.

Add flour and baking powder and combine with a wooden spoon. Stir in apricots and choc bits.

Place tablespoons of mixture onto tray and press down to flatten. Bake for 15-20 minutes at 180°C.