Feeder's Digest

A couple of days ago I received a new baking book called British Baking by Peyton and Byrne from renewing my subscription to Olive. It is a bit pretentious but it had a lovely looking recipe for home-made chocolate digestive biscuits. It inspired a digestive baking fest.
I have an unhealthy love of McVities Milk Chocolate Digestives, my tales of binging on them would make Dr Christian have a freak out. The thought of making a better quality home-made version that would be a treat rather than a self harm session was very appealing.


I compared the recipes from my favourite Baking Magic (by Kate Shirazi) recipe book and the British Baking book and decided the beginners recipe was very much the Baking Magic recipe.
The recipe isn't the same word for word but is based on the original, I don't know where I stand with copyright as far as publishing the recipe here but as I have done nothing but gush about how brilliant this cook book is I'm hoping that Kate Shirazi won't mind. 

So here it is:
Ingredients 
100g wholemeal flour (plus more for dusting)
40g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp oats
120g softened butter
100g soft brown sugar
4 tbsp milk
200g good quality chocolate


Method
Preheat the oven to 190o/ Gas Mark 5 and line 2 baking sheets.
Mix the flours, baking powder and oats in a bowl.
In another bowl cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy (I use a hand blender for this)
Mix the dry ingredients into the butter and sugar with the milk. 
Turn the dough onto a floured surface (mine was very sticky and needed a LOT of flour)



Give a little knead until smooth and roll out with a floured rolling pin until about 3mm. Cut into discs.  Place the discs onto the baking sheet, prick with a fork and bake for 15 mins or until golden.  When baked let cool on a wire rack.


While the biscuits are cooling melt the chocolate then spread the chocolate onto the cool biscuits and leave to set.
























Pimp My Digestive

As usual I couldn't leave the recipe alone and had to mix things up a little.  Inspired by the bar of orange and spice dark chocolate in our treats drawer I added a few drops of orange extract and ground ginger to the dough then when baked and cooled smothered the biscuits in the melted orange and spice chocolate.  The result was a very grown up warming chocolate orange digestive, bitter sweet, buttery and aromatic. Future versions might include flecks of chopped stem ginger and made pretty with slivers of crystallised ginger on the top. 

Home-made chocolate digestives have been a total win, loved by my husband and very sweet toothed four year old.  They stay crisp for a good 48 hours, as for more than that I couldn't tell you because they had all been guzzled.  Have fun trying out the recipe and leave me a message about how you get on.