Cowkies ~ A Random Bake Of Kindness

Me - "I have a surprise for you!"

Mr JS - "Ooooooooooooooh.  Exciting!  Can I eat it?"

Me - thinks to self  'He knows me so well!'

"Maybe!" is my reply

I hand over the bag of cookies - "Think of them more as cookies than brownies ... or more brownie than cookie" is my only instruction.

Mr JS - "Oh ... So Cowkies then!"

Thus Cowkies [cow-keys] were born!  You may prefer to call them Chocolate Brownie Bites but to me there is no better name than Cowkies!

I have seen a lot of posts recently for Random Bakes Of Kindness.  A pretty genius idea formed over at Prepped.  Ever since Mr JS has returned to us from his short stint in Australia he has been a bit glum.  Not too hard to understand given the circumstances (which I won't go into) and that his beloved is still back in Oz.  I had been wanting to bake him something special to help cheer him up, even just a little, but I was struggling to come up with just the right bake for him.  Then Martha emailed me the recipe for Cowkies ... OK, she calls them Double Chocolate Brownie Bites ... and I knew just what to bake!

Can you believe this is the only
photo of Mr JS I have!!
He kindly stepped into the breach at our
wedding and partnered my Sis In Law
for the first dace.

Cowkies
275g plain flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder (sorry, I forgot to weight what a 1/4 cup was!)
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp sea salt flakes
113g unsalted butter, softened
55g dark brown sugar
60g honey (I used half honey, half golden syrup)
200g chocolate drops (I used a mixture of milk and dark)
55g caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 165C.  Whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt.  Beat the butter and brown sugar in a mixer on medium speed till pale and fluffy.  Add honey and beat until fluffy.  Reduce the speed to low.  Gradually add the flour mixture and beat until well combined.  Mix in the chocolate drops.  Refrigerate the mixture for 30 mins.

Drop heaping teaspoons of dough into the caster sugar.  Roll to coat, shaping into balls.  Transfer to parchment lined baking sheets, spacing about 1" apart.  Bake until the tops are cracking and cookies are just set, about 9 mins.  Transfer the sheets to wire racks and let them cool.

Makes 6 Dozen
Cookie Of The Day

Mine didn't turn out quite the same as Martha's but I'm OK with that.  After all hers are Double Chocolate Brownie Bites and mine are Cowkies, the name has stuck!  Next time I'll use less chocolate drops, it was very difficult to try and roll the dough into balls with all those chocolate chips getting in the way ... this, by the way, is something I never thought I would say!

Mr JS - "Thank you for my Cowkies"

Me - "You're very welcome"

After a slight pause ...

Mr JS - "Just think, If you'd used white chocolate drops they would have been Friesian Cowkies!"