Raspberry and White Chocolate Cookies

I've been baking again ... and these turned out so well I thought I'd share them with you.  I had a tin of condensed milk left over from a recent ice cream making session so I thumbed through my large collection of recipes torn out from various magazines over the years and found just the recipe I needed - raspberry and white chocolate cookies.

These are 100% delicious, but are certainly not for those trying to cut back on sugary foods.  With very sweet condensed milk as well as caster sugar and chocolate, I'd say you'd get your sugar hit from just one cookie (and you can't just have one now can you?)!

Here's the recipe online, at Carnation's site, but as usual, I've tweaked it a little.

Quantity: can vary - depends on the size of dough ball/slices - smaller ones cooked quicker and obviously go further - larger ones were lovely and soft when fresh but continued to soften and began to break apart after a day or two (although the weather was very hot so this probably didn't help).  Still perfectly OK to eat, and would be scrummy broken up into bowl of ice cream - oooh, just imagine it.

170g Carnation Condensed Milk
225g baking margarine
225g caster sugar
350g self raising flour
150g white chocolate (my first batch as a mix of white chocolate chips and milk chocolate bar cut into small pieces)
175g raspberries, halved
Icing sugar for the work surface

Heat oven to 180 deg. C, (160 deg C for fan ovens), gas 4.

Line two large baking trays with baking paper.

In a large bowl, cream together the margarine, sugar and condensed milk, then mix in the flour and stir in the chocolate.  Bring it all into a sticky ball and tip out, with the help of a spatula, onto a clean work surface dusted with icing sugar.  Dust your hands with icing sugar too and gently manipulate the ball into a fat sausage.  At this stage I found it easier to work with the dough if I roll it up in icing sugar dusted baking paper and pop in the freezer for about 1/2 hour.  When you take it out, the roll is a little firmer and even slices can be cut ready to for the next stage.  Place a couple of halved raspberries onto each slice of dough and then fold up and use your icing sugar dusted hands to gently roll into a ball and then flatten slightly before placing on to the baking sheet.  Leave a good space around each cookie as they grow as they cook!

Place the trays in the oven and bake for approximately 15-18 mins.  They should look golden at the edges but still slightly soft in the middles (they will firm up a little as they cool).  Let them cool slightly on the trays before carefully moving on to a cooling rack with the help of a fish slice.