How to Make Digestive Biscuits Recipe - Gemma’s Bigger Bolder Baking (2024)

FAQs

What are the ingredients of digestive biscuits? ›

INGREDIENTS: Wheat Flour [Wheat Flour, Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin], Palm Oil, Wholemeal Wheat Flour, Sugar, Rapeseed Oil, Dried Skimmed Milk, Invert Sugar Syrup, Raising Agents (Sodium Bicarbonate, Ammonium Bicarbonate), Salt.

Bake them close to each other.

Biscuits are an exception to this rule: Placing them close to one another on your baking sheet actually helps them push each other up, as they impede each other from spreading outward and instead puff up skywards.

Use Cold Butter for Biscuits

For flaky layers, use cold butter. When you cut in the butter, you have coarse crumbs of butter coated with flour. When the biscuit bakes, the butter will melt, releasing steam and creating pockets of air. This makes the biscuits airy and flaky on the inside.

Increasing the amount of butter definitely makes the biscuit "taste" softer, more crumbly, and more flaky.

A digestive biscuit, sometimes described as a sweet-meal biscuit, is a semi-sweet biscuit that originated in Scotland. The digestive was first developed in 1839 by two Scottish doctors to aid digestion. I'm sure they'd be wholemeal crackers maybe.. BUT they are sold worldwide and are also available in America.

Graham crackers, BelVitas, or Marie biscuits are all useful substitutes for digestive biscuits. Keep reading to get more alternatives for your dessert making.

While biscuits receive some leavening power from chemical sources — baking powder and baking soda — the difference between serviceable and greatness comes from the extra rise that steam provides. In order to generate steam, the oven must be set at a minimum of 425 degrees for at least 10 minutes prior to baking.

Baking soda is a much more powerful leavener than baking powder, about 3-4 times as strong.

Too little fat will result in dry and heavy biscuits. The type of flour you use is important. Don't use bread flour unless the recipe calls for it and avoid whole wheat and other whole grain flours. They will make the biscuits tough and heavy.

For super light, crumbly biscuits try grating or pushing the yolks of hard-boiled eggs through a sieve into the biscuit dough. This increases the fat content and slows down the development of gluten. Cookie recipes on the other hand are more likely to contain eggs. Adding moisture as well as binding the mixture.

Is it better to use butter or crisco for biscuits? ›

Crisco may be beneficial for other baking applications, but for biscuit making, butter is the ultimate champion!

The two keys to success in making the best biscuits are handling the dough as little as possible as well as using very cold solid fat (butter, shortening, or lard) and cold liquid. When the biscuits hit the oven, the cold liquid will start to evaporate creating steam which will help our biscuits get very tall.

Just as important as the fat is the liquid used to make your biscuits. Our Buttermilk Biscuit recipe offers the choice of using milk or buttermilk. Buttermilk is known for making biscuits tender and adding a zippy tang, so we used that for this test.

Use very cold butter.

This buttery steam, in turn, helps produce flaky layers and a higher lift to the biscuits.

Heavy cream provides rich butterfat that gives the biscuits tenderness and flavor, as well as moisture from its water content. The formula requires minimal mixing, reducing the risk of too much gluten development.

While not packed with vitamins and minerals, if you eat digestive biscuits in moderation they can fit perfectly into a balanced diet. The fiber content can aid digestion, and they make for a better choice when compared to other cookies filled with refined sugars and unhealthy fats.

Digestive or diabetic-friendly biscuits are not calorie-free or necessarily healthy. They may contain just 15-20 per cent fewer calories than the regular variety and may encourage you to consume large portions, thinking that they are safe. Many of them are loaded with sugar.

Digestive biscuits with Sodium-bi-carbonate and baking soda than normal biscuits work as an antacid. Thus the biscuits control the acidity problems naturally. Also, the digestive cookies keep away stomach-related problems.