Gluten-free buckwheat, ginger and chocolate chip cookies

Who can resist a big fat American-style cookie? Don’t get me wrong, the custard creams and chocolate hobnobs in your biscuit barrel are not safe with me around, but sometimes it’s not crunch I’m after, but chew.

While British biscuits are fabulous in all their pink wafer glory, American-style cookies are a different proposition altogether and one, controversially perhaps, I have absolutely no interest in dunking in a glass of cold milk. I’m down with dunking biscuits - preferably in a hot cup of tea. Dunking biscuits makes them soft, but cookies are soft already. And more crucially still, biscuits don’t turn your drink into an over-sweetened shadow of its former self. So there, I’ve said my piece on dunking, but it’s your cookie, so dunk or don’t dunk as you please.

Buckwheat, despite the name, is gluten-free. It is a seed related to rhubarb and sorrel and the alarming use of the word “wheat” in its title is probably down to the fact that it is used similarly to wheat. It has been used for centuries in Europe and even longer in Asia. Think French buckwheat galettes or Japanese soba noodles. Buckwheat is slightly nutty in taste, brownish grey in colour and really sings here in my buckwheat, ginger and chocolate chip cookies.

My go-to gluten-free flour of choice for sweet-treats is usually rice flour, but buckwheat flour gives these cookies a really good flavour and an even better texture. I’d happily wager that most people wouldn’t be able to tell these cookies are gluten-free at all. In fact, my gluten-dodging boyfriend was rather concerned on taking a bite, that he’d just inadvertently eaten a big lump of wheat. “These are definitely gluten-free, aren’t they?” he asked, “You really can’t tell!” before reaching out for a second. And if that is not advertisement enough, you’ll just have to make them yourself and test them out on unsuspecting friends and rellies.