Eats shoots and leaves

Salted caramel cookie dough

Makes 20-25 (can be frozen)

You will need:

1 tablespoon cacao (or cocoa) powder 180g ground almonds 8 Medjool dates, chopped 85ml extra-virgin coconut oil 3 tablespoons really good honey Good pinch of flaky sea salt 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste

1Measure your cacao powder and ground almonds into the biggest bowl you own. Using your fingers, tumble in the chopped Medjool dates. These will be fiercely sticky, so the idea is to coat the chopped Medjools thoroughly with the ground almonds and cacao powder.

2Gently melt the extra-virgin coconut oil over a timid heat, then add the honey, the flaky sea salt and the vanilla bean paste and mix well.

3Pour the coconut oil, honey, sea salt and vanilla bean paste mixture into the bowl containing the cacao powder, ground almonds and date mixture, and mash everything together really well. Allow the mixture to rest for 10 minutes at room temperature, which will help to firm up the cookie dough — at least enough to handle it and roll it.

4Pinch off a small piece of cookie dough, and roll it into tiny cookiedough balls. Continue in this way until you have used up all the cookie dough. Line up the cookie-dough balls on a tray and freeze them until they are set. Store them in the fridge (or indeed the freezer) and plunder them at your leisure. You can of course make these into double-chocolate salted caramel cookie-dough balls by coating them in melted dark chocolate.

Just saying.