Cookies come in many shapes and forms, with some enjoyed warm and gooey and others loved for their crunchy texture.
While they are generally easy to bake from scratch, one thing many people struggle with is perfecting the consistency of these sweet treats.
In a bid to see if they really can be used to cook anything, I traded my oven for an air fryer to put a simple recipe to the test.
The basic formula made a sweet vanilla dough with dark chocolate chips that melted as they baked.
Though I wasn’t overly shocked by the flavour, one thing that did surprise me about using the air fryer was the difference in their shape and size compared to traditional oven-baked versions.
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Ingredients:
(Makes 10-12 cookies)
- 125g unsalted butter
- 60g caster sugar
- 75g dark, soft brown sugar
- 300g plain flour
- One egg, room temperature
- Two teaspoons of vanilla extract
- Half a teaspoon of salt
- One teaspoon of baking powder
- A handful of dark chocolate chips
- Tin foil to cover the air fryer basket
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Unlike most recipes, there is no need to chill the dough or mess around with too many fillings. In fact, I found the recipe incredibly simple and the cookies were cooked less than one hour after making the mixture.
To form the batter, I started by melting the butter slightly in a saucepan and then transferred it into a large mixing bowl while some of the chunks were still whole.
I then added the white and brown sugar into the mix, followed by the egg. All the while I stirred the ingredients together to create a cake-like mixture.
Next, I sieved in the flour and baking powder to form a thicker dough consistency. It was trickier to stir at this point so I added in the vanilla extract and a pinch of salt.
The last step of preparing the batter was to add in the chocolate chips and fold them in to evenly distribute them throughout.
I then lined my air fryer basket with some tin foil to stop the cookies from sticking and portioned them out into small balls. There was no need to flatten them down for this recipe, and I’m glad I didn’t because I was pleasantly surprised by the results.
Once the mixture was evenly divided into 12 portions, I placed two in the fryer with plenty of space between them and set the appliance to cook at 160C for eight minutes before checking on them.
I then returned them to the fryer for a further four minutes until each one was golden brown but still slightly soft. This made for the perfect texture when they eventually cooled down.
It has to be said that perhaps the biggest pitfall of using an air fryer to bake cookies is that they have to be cooked in shifts to avoid overcrowding the basket.
Because of this, I baked just two cookies in the first batch, though later realised this was unnecessary. The nature of the recipe makes for small, plump bakes that are perfectly rounded, unlike flatter cookies that are produced in the oven, so there’s room for more.
In the following batches I cooked four cookies at a time, and each one came out almost identical to the other. I would credit this to the circular basket which allows for even heat distribution in the air fryer, unlike old ovens.
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