N° 69: Easy Chocolate Buckwheat Cookies
the easy way
Good morning,
I have a historically adversarial relationship with shortcuts. Don’t get it twisted; that isn’t a humble-brag about my proclivity for doing things the right way or my mindful approach to all tasks. It’s rather more of a fateful flaw (I say ‘fateful,’ not ‘fatal,’ here because it hasn’t killed me yet, but it has certainly steered me—wheels turning slowly, needless to say—off of various paths). When I was in architecture school, I failed to conceive of projects as finite sets of deliverables, images that would ultimately summarize a big picture and suggest details without requiring their producer to actually dwell on the latter. Instead, I’d get lost in making sure that every inch of an unreal building’s digital model was ready for a glamor shot, that every seam was perfectly aligned. For the purpose of a presentation to critics, this approach did me absolutely no good; I’d end up with minimal work to show, printed at the last minute, for my gargantuan effort that had demanded countless all-nighters.
Why am I telling you all this? Because, I suppose, I’ve become less of a sceptic about worthy shortcuts—and it’s time I apply this attitude to recipes. Just as toiling towards proofless pudding did me no good in architecture school, sharing recipes that, because of the effort required, scare readers off can be a frustrating pursuit.
With that in mind, I’ll start sharing with you, from time to time, recipes from my cookbook, Good & Sweet, updated to streamline. I’ll take a complicated recipe—one that requires special equipment or ingredients such as a food processor or freeze-dried corn—and make it easier on you in terms of both ingredient-sourcing and execution. I’m starting with my Salted Chocolate Buckwheat Cookies. The version below is incredibly simple, and the resulting cookies are indistinguishable from (i.e., as rich, fudgy, buttery as) the originals. I hope you’ll give them a shot. Date sugar isn’t too hard to find these days, but let me know if you need me to point you in the right direction.
Thanks for reading this. Talk to you soon.
Brian
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P.S. Recipe:
Salted Chocolate Buckwheat Cookies: The Easy Version
Gluten-free, fruit-sweetened
Here’s my description, which equally applies to the new version, of the original cookie from Good & Sweet:
These cookies are like crumbly brownies, and they are inspired by my favorite cooke from my favorite Brooklyn bakery, Bien Cuit. Their lightly cracked exterior belies the moist, tender, and buttery interior. Buckwheat, with its toasted and slightly fermented flavor, marries the delicate flavor of butter and the richness of chocolate while somehow accentuating both.
The version below produces a virtual identical cookie, but with less time and less equipment. I’ve swapped cocoa powder in for the original’s unsweetened chocolate, so neither chopping nor melting is required here. And instead of whole dates, I use date sugar (which is dried, powdered whole dates); that eliminates hand chopping as well as the need for a food processor to puree. Because of the room-temperature ingredients, there’s no need to chill the dough before shaping and baking; another time-saver.
Yield: 16 cookies
Active time: 15 minutes
Total time: 45 minutes (includes 30 min. to cool)
INGREDIENTS:
