Flax-Meal Biscuits

These biscuits don’t look very exciting, do they? The name isn’t very exciting either. But it is all a front. These are wonderful little biscuits. Extremely versatile.

There aren’t many things that I miss since discovering that avoiding gluten was the answer to all my woes, but every now and again I crave a Mcvities plain chocolate digestive. Gluten free digestives just aren’t the same. There are some that are okay, but on the whole I’d rather leave them.

So when I came across a recipe for home-made digestive biscuits, I thought I would have a go at adapting it.

And I have to say that the results were rather pleasing.

These biscuits are more like a hob-nob than a digestive. The flax meal gives them an oat like texture and taste. Crisp, short and melt in the mouth.

It took a while to come up with the name (given its simplicity, you would think it took no time at all). At first they were called Cozy Biscuits on account that they were made on a rainy Saturday afternoon, when all you want to do is curl up with a cup of tea, a good book or a movie and some biscuits to dunk. My mum suggested GP Biscuits (as in general purpose rather than general practitioner), but it sounded too clinical and something that should come on prescription. In the end I went with Flax-Meal Biscuits, which is a play on wholemeal biscuits after the digestive biscuits that inspired them.

I think you will find a hundred uses for these little biscuits – plain, covered in chocolate, dunked in a cup of tea, used as the base for a cheesecake or sandwiched together with a spoonful of Nutella.

The dough is quite soft so I suggest using a plain shaped cutter, such as a square or a circle. I tried a smiley face, but the eyes and the mouth distorted and it looked like a vampire. It would have been perfect if it was Halloween!

If you want to use it as a base for a cheesecake, either blitz some left over biscuits with some melted butter, as you would normal digestive biscuits, or go ahead and press the unbaked dough straight into the bottom of the tin and bake it. It would work either way, I think. In fact, I suspect the left over biscuits I have in the tin may very well find themselves in a cheesecake.

Flax-Meal Biscuits

Makes approximately 20 biscuits, depending on the size of the cutter.

Ingredients:

• 63g tapioca flour, plus extra for dusting
• 30g buckwheat flour
• 15g gram (chickpea) flour
• 17g rice flour
• 75g flax meal (I used Virginia Harvest cold-milled flaxseed, which is available in Sainsbury’s with the dried fruit and nuts)
• 100g unsalted butter, chilled
• 50g rapadura sugar (or golden caster sugar)
• 2 tbsp double cream
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder

Method:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 celsius / 165 fan. Line a couple of baking sheets with baking parchment.
2. Put all the ingredients in the bowl of a food processor and blitz for a couple of minutes until it forms a ball of dough.
3. Roll out in a well floured surface until approximately 1/2 cm thick.
4. Cut out and place the shapes on the baking sheets. You can place them quite close together as they don’t really spread.
5. Bake for 10-15 minutes, until golden around the edges.
6. Allow to cool on the tray for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Will keep for a few days in an air-tight container.