When it comes to baking, I am both a feeder, and a bit of a narcissist. I love to treat people, and food – for me – is the perfect way to do that. I also like to hear people tell me that what I have made is delicious – it makes me feel as warm inside as a freshly baked cookie (with fewer calories).
I mean, Ioan offering you a cookie is cuter than when I offer you a cookie (even when he is covered in chicken pox spots). But a cookie is still a cookie, right?
As I love baking sweet treats, and Andrew doesn’t like eating them (such a weirdo), and I don’t want Ioan to develop too much of a love for them, and I also don’t want to eat all of them myself (well, I do, but I mustn’t), I often give what I make to other people. This time around, my colleagues were the worthy recipients.
Yes, that cookie is in my hand, not the hand of my colleague, but I did share – promise!
I attended a meeting last week with a few of my fellow colleagues in Paris, and so wanted something that would travel well on the Eurostar, and also cater to their dietary requirements (in between them, both Gluten Free and Dairy Free).
Gluten free was the easy part: I’d heard before that buckwheat flour was naturally gluten free, and my beloved Nigella has a recipe for Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies on her website which uses buckwheat flour. By substituting butter for dairy free spread, and ensuring the chocolate used was minimum 70% cocoa solids, I had a perfect gluten free and dairy free recipe.
I was dubious about how well the recipe would turn out though, as ‘Free-from’ foods can have the reputation of being less than perfect. But I needn’t have worried.
It’s true that these cookies have the texture of a dense sponge rather than a biscuit (think Jaffa Cake base), but that was the only distinction I could make between these gluten free and dairy free Triple Chocolate Cookies and a traditional cookie.
The smell hit me first of all – they are intensely chocolatey. Both in the food mixer and in the oven, all you can smell is delicious chocolate.
Ioan couldn’t resist piling in, and before I knew what had happened, he’d eaten two of them!
The rest of the cookies safely made their way to Paris, and when I opened the package, that chocolatey smell wafted around the whole meeting room. So they were simply irresistible. As cookies, they are pretty spectacular, but these gluten free and dairy free Triple Chocolate Cookies would be delicious served warm with some dairy free ice cream. I am also thinking about ways I can develop the recipe into an extremely chocolatey Jaffa Cake
Gluten Free and Dairy Free Triple Chocolate Cookie – makes approx 18
This is based on Nigella’s recipe here, but I replaced the butter with dairy free spread, and didn’t bother storing the ingredients in the fridge before using – everything was at room temperature.
- 60g dairy free spread, 125g dark soft brown sugar, 1tsp vanilla extract, 2 large eggs, 125g melted dark chocolate, 125g buckwheat flour, 25g cocoa powder, 1/2tsp bicarb, pinch salt, 150g chocolate chips
As much as possible, I use my KitchenAid freestanding mixer to make recipes, and this time I creamed the dairy free spread and sugar in the mixer, before adding two eggs and vanilla extract, and then melted chocolate and cocoa, bicarb, salt and buckwheat flour to the bowl and whisking.
Finally, stir in the chocolate chips (I used a bar of chocolate which I had roughly chopped into fairly large chunks).
Dollop the mixture in walnut sized pieces onto a baking tray lined with baking parchment, and bake at 180 degrees for 10-12 minutes. The cookies will bounce back like sponge cakes do when pressed.
When you take the cookies out of the oven, leave them to cook on the baking tray for around 10 minutes, before transferring to a wire rack.
My colleagues said they enjoyed the cookies, but possibly not as much as Ioan …