custard and white chocolate cookies

These chunky cookies caught my eye in the always reliable Good Food Magazine. It's the kind of recipe I tend to favor for mid-week treats - mostly made in a food processor with little washing-up and no fancy-schmancy ingredients, only that I wasn't all that keen on the custard powder. I don't like it or buy it - you could say I have a thing about it.

It all started with Auntie Angela, my father's elderly spinster sister. I'm sure she wasn't always elderly, but that how she always appeared to us kids. Prim, proper, a trim size eight with tiny feet, perfect make up and always dressed nicely. She nursed my grandparents at home and when they had gone she lived alone with some dogs, too many cats and worked every day of her life until she was 72 when she retired.

After my grandparents died, she always came to us for Christmas as we lived nearest, and she liked to be back at home for her pets in the evening. I had taken over the Christmas dinner preparations at this stage and it irritated me no end that every Christmas she would turn up with a shop-bought trifle as her contribution to the festive dinner. After the hours of menu planning, preparation and cooking and baking that I put into the meal it always seemed like an insult to me.

Fast forward a few years and the trifles are no more - nor am I likely to ever receive one of the pre-packed hyper-coloured offerings ever again, and I miss them. This is usually where I am supposed to say that dear old Angela has shuffled off this mortal coil, but no! She upped and married her childhood sweetheart at the age of 76, now spending half the year at home, half abroad with her new beau and has left me trifle-less. Anyway after some consideration I thought that if Angela could change her life so completely after a lifetime alone, then I could buy a packet of custard powder. Who says a leopard can't change its spots?

Ingredients
140g/5oz softened butter
175g/6oz caster sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
225g/8oz self-raising flour
85g/3oz custard powder
85g/3oz white chocolate, chopped into not too small chunks

Method
Heat the oven to 180C/160C fan oven. Line a couple of baking sheets with parchment. Put the butter and sugar in a food processor and whizz until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and mix again.

Sift the flour and custard powder together and tip into the food processor, pulse to mix to a dough. Scrape out the food processor and work the chocolate chunks in by hand.

Roll the dough into small walnut sized balls and place on the lined sheets, leave room for spreading out between the cookie dough and press each one down a little to flatten out slightly.

Bake for 12-15 mins until golden, remove and cool on a wire rack.

These will keep for over a week in a tin. The custard powder does give these cookies a lovely sunshiny color, I will admit, but does anyone have any suggestions as to what to do with an almost full bag of custard powder?