Cookie success (against all odds)

I don't get much baking done in France, which saddens me because I just love to bake (and then eat it all afterwards, obviously). The 'oven' we have is one of those microwave-ovens and I don't trust them at the best of times. On top of that, the instructions are all in French. I tried shortbread a couple of months back and ended up with a melted mass of butter, sugar and flour. My flapjacks went a little better last month, but still ended up burning on the bottom. 

But I think I've cracked it! I finally found a setting which cooked something properly! I had leftover chocolate, flour, sugar and golden syrup in my room and following an edited eggless cookies recipe ended up with these beauties:

Eggless chocolate chip cookies

Here's the recipe (altered slightly from smokingviper1's recipe on allrecipes.co.uk, find the original here):

Ingredients- (supposed to make 18, mine came to about 14 with two tiny ones)

• 100g margarine
• 75g caster sugar
• 180g self raising flour 
• 100g chocolate chips
• 1 tablespoon golden syrup
• 2-3 tablespoons milk

Method-

1. Heat the oven to 180 C. Grease (or I floured) 1 to 2 baking trays.

2. Beat the margarine until soft, and add the sugar. Cream together until light and fluffy. (Having no electric beaters I did this by hand as best I could, which wasn't very creamy but they still turned out fine!)

3. Stir in the flour, chocolate chips, golden syrup and milk. I didn't have 2 tablespoons of golden syrup left like the original recipe states, so used one, and added in another dash of milk towards the end of mixing. 

Mix well, until it has the consistency of dough. I used my hands in the end because it was easier, and also showed me that my mixture was a bit too moist and too sticky and I was worried about ending up with a melted mass in the oven again. 

I sprinkled more flour into the mixture (I've added an extra 5g into the measurements of this recipe compared with the original) which also allowed me to shape it better.

4. Finally, place teaspoon-sized balls of the mixture on the prepared trays, gently flattening each one into the shape of cookies (note: they will spread out a little wider than this, so mine were about 5-6 cm across and over 1cm thick) and bake for 10-12 minutes, or until golden around the edges. Once cooked remove them from tray immediately and place them on a wire rack to cool. 

Treat yourself and eat one whilst they're hot- that's when they're best!