Chocolate Cinnamon Squidgers

I asked Max what his favourite baked treat of mine was. "Ooooh. Chocolate cinnamon birthday cake! No, maybe your lemon-honey cookies! Um, wait, that chocolate banana cake. Or maybe the Chocolate Cinnamon Cookies? Nope, too hard, I can't pick one". Well, he can't pick one, but here's one of his picks!

Chocolate Cinnamon Squidgers

1/2 cup butter

1 cup brown sugar (not packed)

1 large egg (free range please)

4 ounces melted semi-sweet chocolate

1/4 cup golden syrup (or light corn syrup)

1 3/4 cups white flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoons cinnamon

handful of dark chocolate chips or chunks

sprinkling of white sugar*

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler. While this is going on blend the brown sugar with the butter. Once thorougly blended, add the egg and stir in. Now add your melted chocolate (some of which will adher to the side of the saucepan: this is to enable you to wipe it off with your finger and taste for quality assurance purposes) and golden syrup. Blend dry ingredients and add to the moist. Stir thoroughly to combine and then toss in chocolate chips or chunks. Shape the cookies to the size you like and dust with sugar. Bake for 12 minutes at 350 degrees. Remove from the oven and let cool a minute or two before transferring to your wire rack. If you're rushing around, trying to get kids ready for school the cookies will take advantage of this and fall apart if you try to move them too soon. If you're trying to get ready for work on top of this they will chuckle evilly while falling through the racks. So go away, do something else productive and reappear in a couple of minutes to slide them over.

* note on sugar: I have recently discovered that on the coast our white sugar is cane sugar. Cane sugar, unlike beet sugar, is for some mad reason processed using animal bones to bleach it. Or something. At any rate, former beings are used in the processing of sugar in Vancouver. Ewwwww! So now I'm using organic sugar (not processed this way) and brown sugar (and hoping that's not processed this way) and hoping this weirdness abates at some point. Being a vegetarian (not vegan) baker is tougher than it looks! Not mountain-climbing tough, for sure, but a little salt with the sweet. Having said that I'm appreciating Max moving me over to deeper thinking about my almost 3 decades of veggie habits. We're also rennet-free now and gelatin free with vitamins (never thought about that one: again, ewwww!).