Ingredients

• 150g/5½oz dark chocolate chips
• 125g/4½oz dark chocolate (minimum 70% cocoa solids)
• 125g/4½oz buckwheat flour
• 25g/1oz cocoa powder
• sieved
• ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
• ½ tsp fine sea salt
• 60g/2¼oz soft unsalted butter
• 125g/4½oz soft dark brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla paste or extract
• 2 large free-range eggs
• fridge-cold

Directions

• Clatter the chocolate chips out into a flattish dish and put this in the fridge while you get on with making the batter. It wouldn’t hurt to sit them in the freezer
• either. I do this so that the chips don’t melt too much while baking
• leaving you with nuggets of intense chocolatiness.
• Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4. Line a couple of baking sheets (or 1 if baking in 2 batches) with baking parchment.
• Roughly chop the dark chocolate
• and melt it either in a suitable bowl in the microwave or over a pan of simmering water. Set aside to cool a little.
• In another bowl
• mix together the buckwheat flour
• cocoa
• bicarb and salt
• and fork to make sure everything’s well combined.
• In yet another bowl (I use my freestanding mixer here
• but a bowl and a handheld whisk or
• indeed
• wooden spoon and elbow grease would work
• too)
• cream together the butter and sugar with the vanilla extract until a dark caramel colour and fluffy
• using a spatula to scrape down the sides of the bowl if necessary. Beat in the cooled
• melted chocolate then the fridge-cold eggs (I find this means one doesn’t then have to refrigerate the dough before baking) one by one
• and when both are absorbed into the butter and sugar mixture
• scrape down the sides of the bowl again
• turn the speed down and carefully beat in the dry ingredients.
• Using a wooden spoon or a spatula
• fold in the cold chocolate chips
• then dollop rounded tablespoonsful of the dough onto a lined baking sheet
• leaving about 6cm/2½in between each one. Put the bowl with the remaining cookie dough in the fridge while the first batch is underway.
• Bake for 9–10 minutes
• by which time the cookies will be just set at the edges
• but otherwise seem undercooked
• then remove the sheet from the oven and let the cookies sit on the warm tray for another 10 minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool.
• When the tray is cool
• or you have another one lined and ready to go
• take the bowl of dough out of the fridge and proceed as before.