Chocolate chip cookies with buckwheat flour

There are so many talented people out there writing on blogs and websites, pinning things to Pinterest, sharing secrets on twitter and sometimes it's easy to absorb yummy ideas and not remember where you saw it. Well this is a wee thank you to Kathryn @Londonbakes for introducing me to Foodie PenPals and putting buckwheat flour into your cookies. 

I always have buckwheat flour in the cupboard because I'm always making blinis for catering jobs so I welcomed the idea for using it in something else for a change, and boy was I glad I tried it. 

My foodie pen pal this month has a few of these babies on the way to her. Last month Charlotte, a design student with the blog www.charlotterigby.blogspot.com sent me the cutest parcel with muesli from a local mill, a little chocolate robin hood, (she's from Nottingham) a stick of fudge, and addictive snacks. It's a bit like the opposite to those diet packages some people get sent, oops!

Here's my cookie recipe adapted from a hummingbird bakery recipe.

225g softened unsalted butter  

200g dark brown sugar

150g caster sugar
2 medium eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract 

100g buckwheat flour

300g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons bicarb of soda
225g 66% Valhrona dark chocolate chips chopped into halves or smaller (70% lindt fine but maybe mix with some white or milk choc too)

175C Fan oven

Cream butter and sugar but no need to make fluffy like in cake baking.

Add eggs and vanilla

Sift in dry ingredients and mix until a dough forms (best results in a kitchen aid or similar)

Add 180g of the chocolate and using an ice cream scoop or maybe a 1/3rd cup measure, roll out balls of dough to equal size and place on greaseproof or even better, a silicone sheet with a couple of inches spaced apart to allow for spreading.

Bake middle of the oven for 10 minutes and take out. The edges should look crispy but the centre still soft which will result in a chewy texture when cold.

THIS IS THE IMPORTANT BIT, drop the remaining chocolate chips on the cookies now whilst they are still hot. They will melt on the surface and gloss over making your cookies look the part, then you don't get that dry overcooked flecks on the top you sometimes find!

Now cool on a rack.

TIP I think the best cookies are baked from frozen so roll up the rest or all of it and cling film it in a fat log and store in the freezer for when you need a quick fix. Frozen dough to hot cookie in ten minutes.