Begin by beating the softened butter with a hand/stand mixer, till smooth (see Photo 1).
Next add in the sugar and beat on low to medium speed till incorporated. Then beat further, on high speed, until smoother, paste like and paler in colour (know as 'creaming' the butter and sugar together). See Photo 2.
Add in the Bicarbonate of soda (Baking soda), Salt & Golden Syrup (or alternative) and mix together. Tip for using a spoon with Golden Syrup - oil the spoon first before adding the syrup and it will slide off much easier into your bowl. I use Frylight Cooking spray. See Photo 3.
Sieve the flour & cocoa powder over the bowl with the mixture. If making Gluten free ones, be sure to also add the Xanthan Gum too. See Photo 4.
Slowly miix through the dry ingredients, until it forms a relatively stiff dough. It will start off as looking like very small brown pebbles. At that stage switch to a baking spatula (or big spoon), and use it to push against the dough until it starts to come together (see the stages in Photo 5 below).
Test if it's mixed enough by checking with a little dough, if it forms a dough when squashed together in your fingers (see Photo 6). Now, using your hands, knead against the insides of the bowl to form a smooth ball of dough. Then flatten into a disc and place on top of some baking/parchment paper. See Photo 7.
Line the baking trays/sheets with baking/parchment paper. If it’s a tray/sheet with no lip, I hold the paper in place with some baking spray or lining paste. I have learned the hard way, that without it, the paper and dough or cookies, can fall off and onto the floor and we don’t want that!
On a worktop/counter, place some baking/parchment paper down and a little icing/powdered sugar if needed. Flatten the dough into a disc. Place another sheet of paper on top and you shouldn’t need any flour of even cocoa powder. See Photo 7. Roll out the dough to a 4-5mm (⅙- ⅕ inch) thickness. I used a £2 coin and 1p to get a minimum thickness. Brush excess sugar/cocoa off if you used it.
Dust the cutter in icing/powdered sugar or cocoa and cut out as many cookies as you can, re-rolling the scraps and repeating until all used up, remembering to try to make pairs of cookies to sandwich together. See Photo 8. (Note for some shapes that aren’t symmetrical, for proper ‘pairs’ you should tun over the cutter, or the cut-out dough).
Place the cookies on the baking sheets with a gap in-between. See Photo 9. If doing different sizes of cookies, or ones with cut-outs, please be sure to keep similar sizes ones on the same tray and note that there will be a very slight difference in baking times according to the size of cutters you used. See Photo 10.
Chill for 1 hr before baking, to ensure they keep their shape and don’t spread out much (but also so that the gluten in the dough & YOU, can rest a bit!) ?