Winter comfort - Caramel, sea salt, raw cacao, quinoa cookies

Rain, wind, storm, is the prefect backdrop to baking. We have a beautiful french bakery in Amsterdam that bakes among other things, salted chocolate cookies. Crisp, salty, chocolatey. So I tired to make something similar, without knowing their recipe. I was also lucky enough to have a pot of salted caramel in the fridge that I swiftly took advantage of having.

As per usual I had to add a bit of healthy to the mix, so I decided to use some quinoa flour. You do not have to use any, you can instead up the amount of oat or spelt flour. I just cannot seem to bake without adding or subtracting something to balance out the unhealthy. You could replace the oat with whole wheat spelt flour.

I used raw cacao as it contains lots of good for you B vitamins and minerals (bone contributing phosphorus, iron and muscle relaxing magnesium) and a packs a high dosage of antioxidants. It also is very high in caffeine. There is a big difference between cocoa and cacao, the later being unprocessed and therefore retains many of the benefits of chocolate.

Here are the ingredients:

100 grams butter at room temperature
1,5 dl palm, coconut or muscovado sugar (even unbleached white sugar will do)
2 tbsp raw cacao powder
2 tbsp caramel sauce (you could replace this with another 3/4 sugar)
1 dl quinoa flour
1 dl oat flour
1 3/4 dl unbleached spelt flour (not whole wheat).
1 tsp baking powder
3 large pinches of sea salt + another pinch for after baking
1 egg

1. Preheat your oven to 180C. 
2. Mix the butter, sugar and cacao into a paste. Add the egg, continue mixing. 
3. Add the caramel sauce. 
4. Slowly add the flour and baking flour. 
5. Now add the sea salt. 
6. Cover an oven rack with baking paper. 
7. Using two spoons, scoop up a spoonful of the dough and using the other spoon slide it off onto the oven rack. Continue till you have used up all the dough. Then using the backside of a spoon flatten each ball of dough. 
8. Place in the middle of the oven, bake for 8-10minutes. One out of the oven sprinkle each cookie with a pinch of sea salt.