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It’s the day of love, and this Valentine’s cookie dough it’s gooey, chocolatey and perfect for two

Valentines baking

I love baking for any theme, we all know this – but I never do enough for Valentine’s Day. I am a firm believer that homemade gifts are the best gifts, especially when food is involved, and anything you can bake for the occasion is amazing.

I’ve made a chocolate cake for two, microwave brownies for two, and even some individual cookie dough desserts and they are all glorious and I want you to be inspired to bake with anything you can find on my blog. Whilst these bakes might be designed more for valentines, it can be for Galentine’s, if you have a friend coming over, or even something tasty for your kids to share.

Cookie Dough

When you are making a cookie dough of mine, generally the patterns all stay the same as I love the cookie dough, but the quantities and bake times vary depending on specifically which type of cookie you have in the oven.

Butter – I use block unsalted butter at room temperature, or I use a baking spread out of the fridge. You can also use a salted butter, and leave out the salt later on
Sugar – I used dark brown soft sugar because it’s what I had in the cupboard and I love the deep molasses flavour, but light brown soft and granulated sugar works well, also
Egg – because you are making a smaller amount of cookie dough, you ideally want a small/medium sized egg. If you only have a large, the cookie dough might just be a bit wetter
Vanilla – an optional, but wonderful addition to every bake
Flour – I adore using plain flour in cookies, ideally you want plain flour as you don’t want to use any raising agent such as baking powder in the flour otherwise it might have a cake texture
Cocoa – I use a strong 100% cocoa powder because I want to have a really powerful chocolate flavour
Raising agent – for a cookie, you want a small amount of bicarbonate for a good texture

Flavours & chocolates

I love vanilla in every bake as I have mentioned, but you can easily swap it up to different flavours – especially if there is something specific that your loved one prefers. I use 1/2 tsp vanilla extract in a bake, but you can use orange extract, almond extract, coffee – etc. All use the same ratios, but you can add as little or as much as you like.

You can also add flavours to a bake like this, but in spice form. A touch of 0.5-1tsp of ground ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, etc is all a wonderful addition to a cookie dough. Or, you can use chopped nuts – I love using pistachios, hazelnuts and pecans in a cookie bake – I just chop them up slightly and fold them through the cookie dough.

I, obviously, wanted to add chocolate to the cookie dough to make a bit of a molten centre, and I decided as it’s only a smaller amount, to use chunks of a chocolate bar broken up into pieces. For this, you can use any chocolate bar you want – whether it’s branded, supermarket own, etc. You can also use chocolate chips or callets.

Baking

I used a baking dish that was 15cm wide, so anything around that size would work well. A small baking dish, or pie dish is great for this, as ideally you can serve the cookie dough directly in what you have baked it in. (My dish was from Habitat a long time ago)

I like to serve mine with a scoop of ice cream, and a drizzle of chocolate sauce – but chocolate ice cream, caramel ice cream, any ice cream would be GREAT. I personally love the contrast of a warm pudding with a cold ice cream. You can also drizzle with caramel, or leave it as it is.