Set your oven to 170ºC (150ºC if it's a fan oven) and let it preheat while you prepare your mixture.  While you're at it, line your baking tray with parchment paper. Cream together the butter and sugar until it feels soft, you shouldn't feel any sugar granulates, and it should look pale. Once that's done, sieve your cocoa powder and add it to the sugar and butter mixture, when that's thoroughly mixed in, sieve all the other dry ingredients and add them to the bowl, beating them in well.

Nigella likes to use gloves to shape the cookies, but I find it doesn't stick too much to my hands so I rather skip the gloves and then have a reason to lick my fingers, but you do you. Roll small pieces of batter between your hands, I'm not very fussed about the correct size, I usually just go according to what looks right to me, but Nigella claims they must be around the size of a large walnut. Place them in the previously lined tray and flatten them a bit so they can rise somewhat evenly. They don't tend to spread too much but do space them well, you should be able to fit 12, but I always do 9 just to be safe.


Bake each batch for 15 minutes, once they're out of the oven let them cool slightly before removing from the tray and placing them in a cooling rack, they'll still look and feel a bit soft, but they do continue to cook as they cool so don't worry. I actually underbaked my last batch, obviously for research and not because I set my timer for 10 minutes instead of 15, and they still turned out great, they feel softer but thoroughly baked, almost like a soft brownie, so if you rather have them like that, feel free to underbake them as well. If you do this and feel they're too soft for you, you can just pop them back in the oven for a minute or two, and if someone comments on this, just call the cookies biscotti, we all know how much Nigella loves an Italian reference.

This is where my cookies differ from Nigella's again. You're now supposed to make a topping, whisking 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder, 175 grams of icing sugar, 60 ml of boiling water, and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract in a saucepan over a low heat and then let it cool a bit and drizzle on top of the cooled cookies and then top with Christmas sprinkles, you could maybe even crumble some candy canes and use them as sprinkles. I instead prefer to simply dust them with a bit of icing sugar or let them be on their own, the first time I baked them I did feel they were a bit heavy because of the icing on top, but you do you, icing or no icing, these are the best chocolate cookies out there and I'm prepared to fight you on this. They fall somewhere between a crispy and crumbly shortbread and a soft biscuit, the best of both worlds. And as my mum doesn't like chocolate cookies, I'm bound to eat all 24 of them by myself, what a task...