Chocolate rye cookies

This recipe is from Guardian food writer Annalisa Barbieri on her blog.

It sounded intriguing and very rich! It seems a while since I made something this indulgent, but hey, I think everyone needs a bit of this kind of thing at the moment..

I didn’t have any dark rye flour so I used white rye, and I’m sure the flavour is less intense because of that. I didn’t want to buy any more flour until I’ve used what I have, but once I have dark rye I’ll try it again!

The chocolate was the inspiration – and that inspiration also came from an article by Annalisa last weekend. I learned that cooking chocolate is cheaper than regular chocolate because it doesn’t have VAT on it, not because it’s inferior quality, which is what I always vaguely believed.

So off to the shops to stock up! A bag of Guittard dark (63%) chocolate drops and a couple of bars of Green and Blacks dark (70%) chocolate later and I was ready to go. Quite apart from the taste (and cost) the great thing about both of these chocolates is the fact that there is no soya in them. I’m always on the lookout for soya free food as someone in the family is allergic to soya. It’s amazing how many everyday food has soya in it. Anyway enough of that, and onto the cookies.

There was nearly a disaster at the beginning of the process when I put the gas on under an empty frying pan instead of a pan of water and the bowl of butter and chocolate. I couldn’t understand why the butter and chocolate wasn’t even beginning to melt after a few minutes… and then realised the frying pan was almost red hot and the water in the saucepan was still stone cold! Luckily I haven’t ruined the frying pan. 😀

It’s a great recipe, straightforward and easy to do. And it totally worked! The timing of the baking was a little tricky. The time in the recipe said 8-10 minutes. I have 2 ovens so used both for quicker results. What I’ve realised is that one of those ovens is slightly hotter than the other. So some cookies came out more squishy than others. But that’s ok! Because they are Yummy and Delicious!

Annalisa writes that her recipe made ‘about 20 cookies’ – I managed to squeeze out 31, which according to an online nutrition calculator, means each one was 13g carbs and 178 kcal. Well that’s not so bad is it?! (As long as you can stick to one. Which I have so far today.)

Overall – this recipe is definitely a keeper, and I will be printing it out as well as bookmarking it online.