Kids can help cook these chewy American-style biscuits – use two of them to squish vanilla ice cream into a hand-held treat

• Preparation and cooking time
  • Prep:20 mins
  • Cook:20 mins
  • Plus overnight chilling
• Easy
• Makes 12 sandwiches or 24 cookies

• Freezable

Ingredients

• 280g light soft brown sugar
• 225g granulated sugar
• 250g butter
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract
• 450g plain flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 300g good-quality milk chocolate, roughly chopped into chunks
• vanilla ice cream, to serve

Method

• STEP 1

  To make the cookies, tip the sugars and butter into a large bowl. Get a grown-up to help you use an electric hand mixer to blend them together until the mixture looks smooth and creamy, and a little paler in colour.

• STEP 2

  Carefully break in the eggs, one at a time, mixing well between each egg and pausing to scrape down the sides with a spatula. Mix in the vanilla. (To avoid unwanted crunchy bits, get your helper to crack the eggs into a separate bowl first, then it’s easy to pick out any shell before tipping into the mixture.)

• STEP 3

  Sift in the flour and baking powder, then mix well with a wooden spoon.

• STEP 4

  Stir through the chocolate chunks. Use your hands to squeeze the dough together in 1 big lump, then split into 2 even pieces. Put each piece on a sheet of cling film.

• STEP 5

  Roll each piece of dough in the cling film so that they form thick sausage shapes, then seal the ends. Put them in the fridge and chill for at least 3 hrs or overnight – can be frozen at this point.

• STEP 6

  Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/ gas 4. Take the dough rolls out of the fridge, unwrap and use a small knife to slice each one into 12 pieces, so you have 24 in total.

• STEP 7

  Place the slices on a baking tray lined with baking parchment. Ask a grown-up to put this in the oven to bake for 20 mins or until the cookies are golden brown on the edges, but still pale in the centre.

• STEP 8

  Allow to cool slightly before lifting them onto a wire rack to cool completely. Sandwich the cookies together with ice cream and dig in!