Yellowman (cinder toffee) and chocolate cookies

The deadline for this months alpha bakes has quite suddenly snuck up on me. Before I knew it the 20th January was upon me and I needed to get moving and think of something. The letter this month is Y. I toyed with the idea of yoghurt, and also my home place of Yorkshire. I had not happily settled on anything so I asked Mark if he could think of anything or help me nail down a recipe. Without missing a beat he said 'Something with Yellowman' and that was that.

Yellowman is an Irish version of honeycomb or cinder toffee. As far as my research went I did not find that the recipe differed, there are simply different names for a similar product.

I made my own yellowman, then crushed it up into vanilla cookies, a few chocolate chunks were added. just because!

Yellowman and chocolate cookies

(Makes ~ 20)

150g caster sugar, white us best
45g golden syrup
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

125g butter (I use lactose free alternative) 
100g golden caster sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla paste
2 eggs
250g self raising flour
50g of milk chocolate, chopped

First make the yellowman, begin by lightly oil a baking sheet. Place the caster sugar and golden syrup into a pan and heat gently until the sugar dissolves. Do not stir but swirl the pan occasionally. When a lovely golden caramel colour remove from the heat and whisk in the bicarbonate of soda, the more whisking the lighter the yellowman will be. Tip onto the greased sheet and leave to cool.

Line a baking sheet with baking parchment and preheat the oven to 160C/140C FAN . Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla together. Add the eggs one at a time and beat the mixture until thoroughly combined. Add the flour and chocolate it the bowl, weigh out 100g of your cold yellowman and crush/ break into the bowl.

 Using a spatula fold in the flour, chocolate and yellowman until the cookie dough has no streaks of flour and the chocolate and yellowman is well distributed.

Drop heaped teaspoons onto the prepared baking sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes. Once golden remove from the oven, allow to cool on the sheets for a minute or two then transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling.

The yellowman cooks down to a chewy toffee like substance in the cookies. Mark seemed very pleased with them, I do not think I will get away with making them only once for this challenge.

The leftover yellowman could be used for other baking endeavours, that is if it does not get eaten by 'helpful' kitchen assistants.