Choc, Fruit and Nut Cookies

This recipe makes about 40 small (2 inch/6cm) cookies

Ingredients:

150g/5oz/three quarter cup caster sugar

150g/5 oz/three quarter cup vegan margarine

5 tablespoons of soya milk

300g/10 oz/1and a half cups of plain flour

teaspoon vanilla extract (or according to pack instructions)

a handful each of: chocolate chips, chopped nuts and raisins.

Preheat oven to 200C/400F and grease cookie sheets. Cream together the sugar and marg. Mix in the soya milk and vanilla and then the flour. The mixing of the flour is best done with your hands (messy but fun!). Add the choc, nuts and raisins and mix well. You should have a workable dough (add more flour if it's too wet or more soya milk if too dry and doesn't hold together well). Roll out on a floured board (to just under 1 cm thick) and cut into cookies. Lay on cookie sheets and bake for about 10 minutes for soft bake cookies or a little longer for dryer, crunchy ones.

Variations: Leave out the choc, nuts and fruit and half dip the cooled cookies in chocolate - choccy biscuits! Crushed Whizzers chocolate beans are a colourful replacement for chocolate chips. They can also be pressed all over the top prior to baking. Plain cookies with a handful of sesame seeds or desiccated coconut added into the dough are delicious. Plain cookies with a square of chocolate pressed onto them before baking work well too.