Dark Chocolate Rye Cookies

Rye is not a health substitution here. It is a flavour: darker, faintly sour, with a note that reads as almost savoury against the chocolate. Swap it for plain flour and you have a perfectly nice cookie that tastes of nothing in particular.

Chop, do not use chips

Chocolate chips are formulated to hold their shape, which is the opposite of what you want. Chop a bar and you get shards and dust: the shards stay as pockets, the dust marbles through the dough and turns the whole cookie a shade darker.

Chill the dough for an hour before baking. Rye absorbs liquid slowly and an unrested dough spreads into a thin, crisp disc rather than staying thick in the middle.

Underbake them

Twelve minutes, and they should look wrong when they come out: puffed, pale in the centre, clearly not done. They set on the tray. Bake them until they look right in the oven and they will be biscuits by the time they cool.