Healthy whole-wheat Dark Chocolate Cookies

Homemade cookies are the best. Everybody will agree.Ever since I have started baking cookies at home I just cannot seem to make myself eat any store bought biscuits or cookies. There is an absolute block in my head regarding this. My entire tin of biscuits filled with the good old Marie biscuit and cream crackers are just sitting and getting stale.

 Nobody even gives them a cursory glance these days during tea time.   Also, there is a lot of pressure on me (most of it self-inflicted) to focus on healthy baking and curtail the use of refined flour and sugars. Keeping this in mind and my sporadic chocolate cravings I came up with the recipe for this chocolaty and scrumptious and healthy cookie made totally from scratch.

It is super easy to make too and requires only 4 to 5 ingredients. These cookies are the result of a crazy midnight baking session which I go through once in a while. They are a bit on the less sweet side because everyone at home like their baked goodies to be lightly sweetened. You can easily alter the amount of sweetness to your liking.  

Preparation time: 15 minutes.

Chilling Time: 30 minutes

Baking Time: 16 to 18 minutes

Ingredients:

1. 8 heaped tbsp Whole-wheat Flour (60 gm approx.)
2. 5 heaped tbsp Dark Cocoa powder (40 gm approx.)
3. Softened Salted Butter 75 gm
4. Date Palm Jaggery(patali Gur) 4 tbsp
5. Milk (optional)
6. Butter Paper
7. Baking Tray

*White Chocolate Button/ Chocolate Chips (absolutely optional)

Method:

• Start by keeping all the ingredients on your work counter and all the mixing bowls, spoons, and baking tray ready.
• Cream the softened butter with a handheld mixer or a whisk until it is fluffy and the colour of the butter changes. It will take you around 7 to 8 minutes at low to medium speed and longer if using a whisk.

• Mix in the jaggery with the creamed butter and keep mixing at low speed.

• In a separate bowl sieve together the whole-wheat flour and the dark cocoa powder
• Now mix the flour-cocoa mix into the creamed butter jaggery mixture until combined and forms a dough. You may add some milk if required.

• Eventually, use your clean hands to bring it all together and form the chocolate cookie dough
• Roll the dough into a ball and wrap in cling film or aluminum foil and put it into the fridge to chill for 30 minutes.

• After 30 minutes take out the cookie dough and form smaller balls from it. Flatten slightly with the palm of your hands and form small disks of about ½ cm thickness.
• Make designs on the cookies with the help of a fork according to your liking. I was helped by my hubby in the cookie designing bit and they did turn out to be very very pretty. You can use white chocolate chips also if you desire.
• Pre-heat the oven to 180^O C. Arrange the cookies on a paper lined baking tray with at least ½ a cm gap between them as the butter in them tends to make them spread while cooking. Bake for 16 to 18 minutes’ till baked through. The cookies might seem to be a bit soft when you take them out from the oven but they get crispier as they cool down
• Your easy, yummy, chocolaty, buttery and healthy whole-wheat cookies are ready to be enjoyed with a delicious cup of coffee or with tea or just like that when you are feeling a bit moreish.

P.S

1. Patali Gur or Date Palm jaggery holds a very special place in my heart and it is one of the winter delicacies that I absolutely adore. It has a wonderfully rich and smoky flavour which can easily be used as a sugar substitute. I love to use it in my desserts but if you find it difficult to get your hands on you can easily use raw unfiltered honey or any other sweetener of your choice.

2. Creaming the butter until soft and buttery is an extremely important step as that gives these cookies the perfect texture.

3. If you do not have a cookie tray/ baking tray please do not worry. Neither do I! The hack that I use is I just cut my butter/baking paper into a round shape and place it directly on the microwave ovens turntable. Voila! Your baking tray is ready to be used.