Whole Wheat Digestive Cookies

Digestive cookies (or digestive biscuits) are the backbone of British baking (that’s what I read in a book). I was looking for a recipe with British origin in the Reader’s Digest Cookies book and found this one to be very simple to bake with ingredients easily available. I have not changed anything in the recipe and also don’t have anything to write in the My Notes section because it’s pretty straight forward. Just mixing dry ingredients and wet ingredients, forming a soft dough, rolling it out and cutting shapes with a cookie cutter. How difficult is this?
Yield: 45 cookies
2 Take out the butter from the refrigerator, cut up into small pieces and add it to the flour mixture. Using a pastry blender further cut the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. If you don’t have a pastry blender you can do this with your fingers or fork too, but it’s more work.
3 Stir in the sugar and add milk little by little to form a soft dough. Knead until smooth.
4 Press the dough into disk, wrap in plastic wrap and leave it in the fridge for 30 minutes. Set the kitchen timer for 15 minutes. When the timer goes off start preheating the oven at 375F for 15 minutes. So by the time the oven preheats it will be 30 minutes and you can start working on the cookie dough. Also butter 2 cookie sheets.
5 Lightly flour the surface. Roll out the dough into 1/4 inch thickness. Use a cookie cutter to cut out the cookies. Gather the dough scraps, re-roll and continue the same procedure until all the dough is used.
6 The cookies tend to stick to the floor, so use a spatula to lift and transfer the cookies to the baking sheets. Place them 1 inch apart. Prick all over with a fork.
7 The baking time depends on the thickness of the cookies and the material of the baking sheet. Note that cookies baked on a dark colored non stick baking sheet tend to bake faster and if not alert the bottom will get burnt. My second batch cookies were thinner than the first batch. So the first batch took 13 minutes, while the second batch was done in 10 minutes. Look for golden color cookies. If baking both the batches at the same time, place each baking sheet in individual racks and shift sheets halfway through baking.
8 Leave the cookies in the baking sheet itself for 5 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack to cool.
As for the texture, it is crispy but not “melt in your mouth” type of crispness but quite similar to a hard candy. After reading hard candy don’t assume that you cannot bite it. It’s definitely chewable and very tasty.
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October 8th, 2009 at 12:01 am
I tried Your Dates cake which turned out too good. This weekend i want to try out this digestive cookie for my Dad. As my Dad is a diabetic, I want to make a low calorie cookie for him. Can i replace butter with oil in the above recipe. If yes, tell me the oil quantity i should use.
Thanks for trying it Nandhini. I won’t suggest baking these cookies for a diabetic because it is very sweet. Secondly oil substitution will not be right in the recipe, because the digestive cookies gets it’s distinctive flavor from the butter. Instead try the whole wheat crackers. It’s a savory cookie, so no sugar at all. You can even try reducing the quantity of oil a little bit.
October 3rd, 2009 at 10:59 pm
I came across this recipe today …will try it out soon.
I have made many types of cookies but not digestive.
Thanks for the recipe.