DOUBLE CHOCOLATE & CHERRY RYE COOKIES

Cookies are the middle child in my repertoire.

I love them, don’t get me wrong. But I’m a simple Valleys boy, and my idea of a cookie is something solid and sturdy I can plunge into a builders tea with no fuss. Nothing fancy, just so long as it holds it’s shape.

Hell I will even go on record right now and say my favourite biscuit ever is a digestive biscuit. You’ll never find my Kitchen without a pack in my cupboards which I snack at while I cook. Everyone needs a chefs treat.

I blame this on the fact that I am not a ‘sweet’ person. You’ll more often find my face in a bag of crisps or a wedge of cheese and while this is not going to change any time soon, from time to time I do feel as though I need to have something sweet on the countertop for callers.

My aversion to sweet treats however affords me the wherewithal to be as fussy as I can be when it comes to the cookies in my life. I have toyed with a few different recipes and every time I bake, while I’m always happy with the finished product, I always wished I had just baked a cake or something.

Until these cookies.

I’d bee toying with the idea of dicking about in the Kitchen with different flours because I was hoping an interestingly textured cookie would jumpstart my desire for them again. A conversation  with my friend Jacob (recipe writer and all around baking genius – you can find his work here) encouraged me to bake a batch of cookies using the ‘cold dough’ method.

I mean, this method is pretty common and any keen/regular baker could probably do this method blindfolded. But as someone who only passes cookies across his counter sporadically, it was not a technique I was used to.

The result is a robust dough that you can manipulate into little balls and when pressed down, bake so perfectly with very minimal spread out meaning your cookies stay tight, crunchy but still retain the oozy cakeyness you want in cookie architecture.

I wanted to use rye flour because I love the rough nutty flavour it has as well as packing a solid punch in the texture department. Rye four also gives cookies an intense brownie texture so I figure let’s go ALL the way. So I made these DOUBLE (go with me) chocolate chip cookies by adding melted chocolate into the batter so that the chocolate fudgeyness was almost volcanic.

Jesus it’s probably TRIPLE chocolate considering that I also added some chocolate chunks in at the end? I am more piggish than I gave myself credit for.

I promise you that you will not make these cookies once. I have made them twice since the first time, once for the test run and second on request from those who tried the first batch. I repeated the recipe to the letter and got the same results. This means, you can absolutely trust this recipe.

Pour yourself a glass of milk before you eat these. You’ll need it.

Drop 150g of dark chocolate in a bowl with 25g of butter and fling it in the microwave. Zap it for about 30 seconds, stirring every now and then to help both melt together. Do you know, I have never, ever melted chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water? Who has ever had time for that? Zap the damn thing, it works the same.

Now combine 115g of rye flour with 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder with 1/2 teaspoon of sea salt. Fork everything together and put to one side.

Crack two eggs in a big bowl and whisk them until they are frothy. Throw in 85g of soft, dark sugar and 85g of caster sugar and beat into the eggs. It’ll turn a super enticing butterscotch colour but refrain from eating it.

Pour in the melted chocolate and mix together.

If you ever want something to run THROUGH your cookie batter (like nuts or chocolate or fruit etc) it’s always easier to add them into the wet ingredients otherwise if you do it after the dry has been added, it’ll only stick to the outside because it’ll be harder to push them INTO the dough.

So, having said that, add 50g of roughly chopped up dark chocolate. Don’t use chocolate chips. They have a weird dusty coat on them that doesn’t melt as sexily. Now add 50g of roughly chopped cherries (the plastic sweet ones from a tub).

Now, spoonful by spoonful, add the flour mix into the wet. Grab yourself a wooden spoon to mix this in. It will be a very tough dough but go with it. Think of it as a workout, and then never go to the gym. Ever.

Once everything is combined, grab yourself a nice slab of cling film, scrape your dough on to the film and wrap it up, twisting the ends like a sweet. Roll it out a little to create a thick sausage shape and chuck in the fridge for 30-45 minutes.

During this time, preheat your oven to 180c.

When you’re ready, take your dough out of the fridge,

Now I don’t know your situation and how many cookies you can fit on a baking tray but the deal is this – these measurements give you enough dough for a good 12 cookies. In which case, I could fit all 12 in my oven at one time (6 balls on 2 sheets).

What you want to do is chop the dough into 12 even slices and using your palms, roll each slice into a ball. Smoosh the ball together in your palms gently to slightly flatten it. Not FLAT FLAT, just not as round as a golf ball.

Place on the baking tray and then scatter some bashed pistachios over it. You could totally skip that part though, I was just being fancy.

And then go ahead and bake the cookie dough for 10 minutes.

Take them out of the oven and let them rest for 10-15 minutes before placing them on a cooling rack for another 30 minutes to solidify.