The starting point for these vegan tea biscuits was the discovery that the distinctive flavour of shop-bought rich tea biscuits comes from barley malt (maybe something everyone else knew all along).
Adding just a small spoonful of barley malt extract to a batch of plain shortcake biscuits gives them a lovely mild malty flavour. The malt syrup doesn’t interfere at all with the firm crispy texture that makes this kind of biscuit so good with a cup of tea, dunked or otherwise.
You can also use this recipe as the basis for creating your own ‘teatime biscuit selection’ since none of the supermarkets seems to stock such a thing. One batch of dough produced eight large round biscuits (made with an 8 cm cutter), ten fruit currant shortcakes and a dozen little chia star biscuits (pictured here).
You could also add chocolate chips, or some poppy seeds and a bit of lemon zest, for example. The fruit shortcakes work particularly well if you sprinkle on some granulated or demerara sugar before baking.
Vegan Tea Biscuits…
ingredients
- 100 g flavourless/odourless coconut oil
- 60 g soft vegan margarine
- 100 g caster or granulated sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
- 12 g barley malt syrup (roughly two teaspoons)
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 240 g plain white/unbleached flour
- 20 g cornflour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- optional: 40 g currants for fruit shortcake; a handful of chia seeds
method
- Set the oven to 180°C/360°F and line the base of two baking trays (enough room for 16 biscuits roughly 9 cm in diameter).
- Place the coconut oil in a large bowl. Soften it a bit in the microwave if it is not already at warm room temperature, then whisk together with the margarine and sugar, ideally using an electric hand whisk, until light and fluffy.
- Add the barley malt and vanilla and whisk for another minute or so.
- Sift the flour, cornflour and baking powder together into the oil mixture and stir with a metal spoon or a fork until you have a medium-firm biscuit dough.
- If you are adding currants or other ingredients, mix those in at this stage (dividing the dough into smaller bowls if you are making several kinds of biscuit from the same batch).
- Handling only as much as necessary, transfer the ball of dough to a well-floured board and, sprinkling the top with flour as you go, roll it to a thickness of around 3 mm. Use cutters (or the rim of a thin glass) to cut out the biscuits and transfer them carefully to the baking trays. Sprinkle on some granulated sugar before baking if you’d like a really crispy top.
- They will only expand a little bit, so leave some space, not too much, between biscuits.
- Bake for between eight and twelve minutes, depending on your oven and the size of the biscuits. They should be turning a light golden colour. If you take them out on the light side, they will be a bit softer, like shortbread. For a really crunchy biscuit allow them to brown a bit more, like the fruit shortcakes pictured here.
- Sprinkle with some sugar, if you haven’t already done so, and remove the biscuits to a rack to finish cooling.
- These will store really well in an aitright tin.
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