Soft Chocolate Orange Cookies

I've signed up for a night time 10km run. I don't really know why (it could be the fault of The Thew who is a superman of athletic endeavour and may have inspired me). I saw it advertised in the cafe in my local park on Sunday morning and was curious about it. Then I had some time to kill that afternoon while waiting for a train and instead of just browsing the site I bunged my name and cold hard cash down. I do get a complimentary t-shirt but as it’s a Nike run I'd bloody well hope so. It's more like I bought a t-shirt and got a 10km run thrown in. 

Anyway I was starting to come to terms with it when I saw that running is the new clubbing on the Guardian online. This run has a light show, music and a party afterwards. This has slightly depressed me. I stopped spinning when it struck me that it seemed to be where people go when they realise they'll never go clubbing again but still want to listen to house and dance music. Not that I go clubbing anymore but I don't want to think I've given up hope of one day being in a club trashing about to hard house. Therefore I just have it on my iPod and go running - not much better but somehow it doesn’t feel as bad to me. I'm now concerned about this night time 10km, as it might be dangerously grown up and a bit sad. 

I'm going to go ahead with it as one of the reasons I love living in London is all the random stuff that goes on which I think I should take advantage of. It does mean I don't have long to train, as its in less than four weeks, so I'm going to cut out crap food until I do the run. So this week I've baked two things that aimed to use up all the chocolate I have in my home. This is the first of them. As I don't fancy running 10km with an entire chocolate orange weighing me down (left over from Easter) I've made up a soft chocolate orange cookie. They're pretty good so give them a go. It doesn't need to be a chocolate orange on the top just whack a huge hunk of any chocolate on top that you happen to have. 

Ingredients 

200g butter

100g soft brown sugar (I used light as I didn't have dark but I think that would work well)

200g caster sugar

1 large egg

75g cocoa powder

275g self-raising flour

50-100ml milk

1 chocolate orange (this recipe leaves you 4 pieces to sustain you while you bake) or 16 chunks of chocolate 

1.    Preheat the oven to 220°C/GM7.

2.    Cream together the butter with both sugars. Then mix in the egg.

3.    Sift the cocoa into the bowl and add the flour. It's best to mix with a spoon as it’s a dense dough. If you need it add some milk but make sure you mix the dry ingredients in well first as you don't want the dough too wet.

4.    Once it’s come together divide the mixture into 16 balls and place on a baking sheet. Leave a lot of room so you'll need two trays or do in two batches. Then smush a slice of chocolate orange, or a chunk of chocolate, into the top of the dough flattening it out a bit.

5.    Bake for 10 minutes at the top of the oven and let cool as they will be delicate when first out.

6.    Run 10km wearing your 'complimentary' t-shirt.