Vegan Digestive Biscuits

The starting point for these vegan digestive biscuits was a recipe in an old Friends of the Earth Cookbook – well, 1980, so not exactly old in digestive biscuit terms. They’re really wholesome, slightly salty, slightly sweet, crunchy biscuits that will work just as well in a sweet or savoury setting.

Digestives have a special status in the biscuit world for being almost virtuous. Some recipes include oatmeal alongside wholemeal flour for a rougher, more oatcake-like texture. In this case, porridge oats are ground to a flour for a smoother, but still crunchy biscuit. The shop-bought variety, incidentally, are made with mostly white flour and some wholewheat, so these have much more fibre.

It takes surprisingly little salt to give a biscuit a salty edge. The entire batch of 12-14 biscuits contains just 1.5g added salt.

One of the best things about this recipe is that you can use a food processor to make the dough. It takes a few minutes from start to finish. You can also make them ‘longhand’ by rubbing the fats into the flour pastry-style, but it doesn’t produce a better result, so you may as well do it the quick way.

For chocolate digestives, throw in a handful of chocolate chips near the end of the mixing process or turn the biscuits upside down and cover the base with a thin layer of dark chocolate once they have cooled.

vegan digestive biscuits…

ingredients

• 70 g porridge (rolled) oats
• 100 g wholemeal plain flour
• 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 35 g light muscovado (or other brown) sugar
• 25 g soft vegan margarine
• 50 g coconut oil (preferably the flavourless kind)
• 1 tbsp oat (or other non-dairy) milk
• 1 tbsp maple syrup

method

1. Set the oven to 180°C/360°F and line a large baking sheet.
2. Grind the porridge oats to a sandy flour in a food processor or grinder.
3. In a large food processor, add the wholemeal flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt to the ground oats and pulse to combine.
4. Soften the coconut oil a little if it’s not already at warm room temperature (it should be of a similar softness to the margarine). Then add the coconut oil and margarine to the processor and pulse/blend until you have a crumbly biscuit dough.
5. Add the sugar and blend a little further.
6. Lastly add the milk and maple syrup and blend until the dough is coming together. (If you are adding chocolate chips, add them a few seconds before the end of the mixing.
7. (You can make the dough by hand if you prefer, rubbing the fats into the flour and sugar as if you were making pastry and then mixing in the liquids with a fork.)
8. Transfer the dough to a floured board and roll to a thickness of around 3mm.
9. Cut rounds and transfer these to the baking sheet. The biscuits will expand a little, so leave a centimetre’s space between them. You can mark them with a fork if you like before baking, or a cookie stamp if you have one.
10. Bake for 12-15 minutes, until they are just beginning to turn golden at the edges.
11. Allow the biscuits to cool completely. (For chocolate digestives, turn them upside down when cool and spread a little melted chocolate over the surface.)

If you would like to receive e-mail alerts when new recipes are published, please see my contact page.