‘Half-baked’ cookie dough balls

Well, I’d barely finished devouring the cookie dough dip when the urge to create a ‘half-baked’ version overwhelmed me!

My favourite flavour of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream was always Half Baked, with its big gobs of dense chewy cookie dough and chocolate chunks thrown into the mix….yummmm!

I wanted to create an equally moreish ‘crispy round the edges’ but ‘soft in the centre’ half-baked cookie. Eager to get on whilst the idea was fresh in my mind, out came my baking boxes filled full of goodies and inspiration. The final outcome was a fairly simple twist on the original recipe. By taking the principles of the cookie dough dip I combined this with some more robust flours and oatmeal to create a firmer dough ball ready for baking. This recipe was very experimental and I wasn’t sure how long to bake the balls for. I allowed them to begin to go golden at the edges but you may well want to try taking them out even earlier than that. The chocolate chunks really add to experience so I’d suggest keeping the chunks quite large and the dough balls not too neatly scooped to get a few crispy whips around the edges.  I used an ice cream scoop that was approx. 3cm in diameter and scooped out balls so that they had a flattish bottom.

I can imagine further experiments in coming weeks- chocolate dough with white chocolate chips, fudgey varieties, fruit and nuts….. maybe think of a cookie recipe, scoop it  and ‘half-bake’ it?

Has anyone tried this idea before? Let me know how it worked for you.

Recipe: ‘Half-baked’ cookie dough balls

Makes approx. 12 balls

Ingredients

1/3 cup brown rice flour

1/3 cup tapioca flour

1/2 cup ground oats

½ tsp baking soda

100g cooked or canned chickpeas

1 tsp ground flax pus 1tbs hot water

3 tbs peanut butter

1 tbs coconut butter

¼ cup agave syrup plus ¼ tsp stevia

2 tsp vanilla extract

Approx. ¼ cup soy milk (more or less depending upon consistency of dough)

½ cup dark chocolate chunks

Method

Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl. Blend wet ingredients together until very smooth. Pour/spoon the wet ingredients into the dry and mix together well adding as much soy milk as needed (the dough should not be too sticky but hold together well). Add choc chucks last and ensure well mixed through. Line a baking sheet with parchment.  Scoop balls of dough using  an ice-cream scoop making sure the ‘scoop’s are not too perfect (and not too large) with some dough falling over the top to get uneven edges, carefully lift the ball out of the scoop and lay on the parchment placing balls  fairly close together as they won’t rise much at all. Bake at 180C for 12-15 minutes until only just going golden around the edges to ensure the ‘half-bakes’ centres.

For tips and info on recipe measurement conversions, ingredients, substitutions and the methods behind how I do things.... check out my 'baking tips' tab at the top of the page.