Vegan White Chocolate and Cashew Cookies

Preheat the oven to 180°C fan/200°C/400°F/gas mark 6 and line 2 baking trays with greaseproof paper. Add the softened butter or margarine, caster sugar, light brown sugar and vanilla extract to a mixing bowl and cream together – you can use a wooden spoon or a stand mixer with a paddle attachment.

Sift the flour and bicarbonate of soda into the butter or margarine mixture and mix together until crumbly. Add the milk and mix to create a thick cookie dough.

Add the 50g of chopped white chocolate and the 50g of chopped cashew nuts to the dough and mix. Your cookie dough will be very thick, but sticky enough to easily roll into balls.

Roll into small balls of 40g each (1 heaped tablespoon), and space out evenly on the lined baking trays. Press down only slightly to flatten the tops (not too much – you still want them to be ball-like). The cookies will spread out a lot, so give them room. Before baking, press the remaining chopped nuts and white chocolate into the tops of the cookies.

Bake for 10 minutes in the centre of the oven. When they come out of the oven, the edges of the cookies will be firm, but they will still be soft in the middle. This is fine as they will firm up as they cool down and set. Leave on the tray to cool down.

These are best enjoyed on the day of making. Store in a sealed container at room temperature and eat within a few days.

Holly’s tip: To make the cookies equal-sized, place a cookie cutter of a similar size around each cookie in turn and nudge it slightly to shape it as it comes out of the oven.