Spelt, Rye and Berry Cookies and a Cocoa Comparison

Biscuit recipes are my new obsession, especially easy biscuit recipes. I've always liked biscuits of course, but when it comes to baking, cake has always taken precedence over biscuits and cookies. I suspect being given Biscuit by Miranda Gore Browne as a birthday present last year has something to do with it. A whole book dedicated to biscuits puts a different spin on things. It stayed at the top of my pile of bedside reading for a long time. Despite this, I've only made one recipe from the book: blackcurrant and white chocolate biscuits - until now that is. We were off to spend the afternoon with friends and biscuits being quick and portable were an ideal bake to take along. To fit in with my supposed Healthy January, I went to Miranda's Almost Healthy Biscuits section of the book for inspiration. I got no further than the very first recipe, Super Berry Heroes - excellent, some healthy goji berries and blueberries to give a much needed nutrient boost would be my berries of choice. Not only did these contain an interesting flour mix of spelt and rye, but also included cocoa.

I was recently sent a jolly red pot of Food Thoughts fairtrade, organic cocoa powder to try out and I was very keen to do so. Green & Black's being fairtrade and organic is my go to cocoa, but it's always nice to have some choice. As soon as I saw the organic status was certified by the Soil Association, I felt reassured as they and Demeter are the only certifying bodies I really trust. Fairtrade is really the only way to go - cocoa is a luxury and the people that grow it should be properly recompensed for their efforts. This cocoa comes from the Dominican Republic.

I thought it would be fun to do a taste test with the three cocoas I happened to have in the house: Food Thoughts, Green & Blacks and Bournville. As well as the obvious colour differences, they were all quite distinctive in taste. Bournville is a very pale powder with a sweetish taste, but is rather insipid and lacks character. Green & Black's is very dark, robust and bitter. Food Thoughts is midway between the other two in terms of colour but has a richer chocolate taste than either. However, in terms of packaging, Bournville gets the brownie points. The Bournville pot is about 3/4 of the size of the Food Thoughts one and yet they both contain 125g - when waste is such a big issue for us, over packaging is unnecessary and undesirable.

We are a household of regular cocoa drinkers, but make it with no sugar, mostly water and just a dash of milk. I was interested to compare this with our usual Green & Blacks.  In addition to the colour difference, we immediately noticed it had a more refined taste. It was smoother and less bitter and we really liked it.

This is how I made

Blueberry, Goji Berry, Spelt & Rye Cookies

• Creamed 120g salted butter with 100g vanilla (golden caster) sugar and 85g muscovado sugar until soft and pale.
• Beat in 1/2 tsp vanilla extract and one duck egg.
• Sieved in 60g wholemeal spelt flour and 80g rye flour, together with 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda, 1/4 tsp baking powder and 1 tbsp cocoa powder (Food Thoughts).
• Added 85g rolled oats.
• Grated in 1/8 tsp nutmeg and mixed together.
• Stirred in 40g goji berries and 50g dried wild blueberries.
• Rolled teaspoonfuls of mixture between my hands to make about 30 walnut sized balls.
• Placed well apart on lined baking trays and baked at 180C for 13 minutes.
• Left to cool for a couple of minutes, then transferred to a wire rack to cool completely.

In CT's expert opinion, these biscuits were "rather good". Crisp on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside with lots of texture. The cocoa added to the general flavour without being obviously chocolatey, which was absolutely fine. The spicy nutmeg flavour permeates the whole biscuit in a rather delightful way. Although there was no ginger present, they reminded us both of gingerbread in its best form.

Food Thoughts Cocoa is available at Sainsbury's and retails at £2.20