Vegan English baking: Fruit digestive biscuits (cookies)

It seems that I have spoken about fruit digestive biscuits a few times on this blog. When I took part in Kate's listography of top 5 biscuits, regular and fruit digestive biscuits made my list. That post also sparked some interesting comments about differences between Australia biscuits and American cookies, and allowed me to conclude that digestive biscuits are like American Graham crackers but softer and perhaps a little sweeter. More recently, I showed yoghurt-coated fruit digestives from Spain, a little more exotic than the regular fruit variety but still true to the original digestive biscuit base.

Given the above, it is surprising that I have never tried to make digestive biscuits before. I genuinely grieved when fruit Granita biscuits, Australia's closest option to fruit digestives, disappeared from the Arnott's range some years ago. Digestives aren't a complicated biscuit and they don't even need veganising, with the standard McVitie's version being dairy and egg free.

For those of you who aren't familiar with digestives, they are one of the more popular biscuits (cookies) in Britain and are a soft-ish biscuit that is perfect for dunking in tea. They are made from brown wheat flour, which gives a distinctive taste, and are slightly but not very sweet.

Digestives have reportedly been around since 1839, when they were developed by Alexander Grant, a worker at McVitie's. At that time they were called "homewheat" biscuits because McVitie's used British rather than imported wheat. The change in name to "digestive" biscuits stems from the use of baking soda in original recipes, which was seen as an aid to digestion at the time. Chocolate-coated digestives were created in 1925, and these days the flavour options are extensive, including milk and dark chocolate as well as dark chocolate caramel 

McVitie's is the best known brand of digestive, and so it was with considerable surprise that I found the British McVitie's website to be lacking in fruit digestive biscuits! I am still perplexed by this discovery and wish that I had checked biscuit aisles more carefully when we were in England. McVitie's do list a fruit shortcake, and other English brands make fruit digestives, but I fear that McVitie's has dropped a little in my view with their omission of the fruit digestive from their range.

McVitie's regular digestive biscuits, and my fruit digestive biscuits

Today, of course, is about making fruit digestives and not about McVitie's biscuits per se. I was interested to see that most online recipes for digestive biscuits list butter and milk in the ingredient list, and often oats, despite those being missing from the ingredient lists of commercial versions. I decided to be guided by the McVitie's packet, and my version below thus omits milk and uses vegetable oil rather than non-dairy spread.

I used currants as the only fruit addition, but you could be more adventurous and use other dried fruit if desired. I also decided against using other flavourings like vanilla or mixed spice, although I think both would work. Perhaps next time I will branch out a little more, but for this recipe I thought simple would be best.

Fruit digestive biscuits

Adapted from a recipe for 'Close to McVitie's Digestive Biscuits'

Vegan

Print recipe

Ingredients

1 cup wholemeal flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

4 tbsp brown sugar

4 tbsp vegetable oil

2 tbsp water

1/4 cup currants (small raisins)

Method

Preheat your oven to 190'C (375'F) and line two baking trays with baking paper.

Combine the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and brown sugar in a mixing bowl. Add the oil and water and mix to combine. Add the currants and knead to create a thick, smooth dough.

Roll out the dough on a floured surface, to about 0.5cm thickness. Cut into circles using a cookie cutter or round glass. Bake on the prepared trays for 14 - 16 minutes or until golden brown; allow to cool on the trays before storing.

When I first tried these, I made sure to eat them without eating a commercial digestive biscuit first. When consumed this way, on their own terms, the biscuits are thoroughly enjoyable. They are just sweet enough, with plenty of currants to balance out the wheat biscuit; are soft enough to bite into smoothly but crisp enough to break evenly in two; and work well when dunked into a cup of tea (a crucial part of performance!). Mr Bite declared them to be very similar to 'true' digestives.

Sadly, though, when I subsequently bit into a regular McVitie's digestive biscuit, I realised that my version was missing the distinct, characteristic digestive taste. McVitie's are a little maltier, a little wheatier, they have a little more something that is missing from this version.

I suppose I shall just have to make these again, and again, until I hit upon that something. Fortunately, I don't think I'll mind that process at all.

Are you a digestive biscuit fan? What about fruit-based versions?

This post is part of my Vegan Month of Food contributions for October 2012. 

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