Scottish Digestives

 

Scottish digestives are very simple wholemeal biscuits, or what we call cookies. I've always enjoyed the thick round slabs in the McVities packages, but making my own made me realize something: digestives are an awful lot like shortbread, only more brown. Now if you understand the difference between Irish Soda bread and Irish Brown bread, you get my meaning. Naming them Digestives was a clever way to suggest wholesomeness and a place after the main meal of the day, but these are not virtuous cookies. They are shortbread with extra fiber. Make no mistake--lots and lots of butter here.

You will notice that the cookies in the photo are bar-shaped, not round. This is because the dough is very dry and crumbly; once I had it assembled, it seemed sheer folly to attempt to roll and cut. Kneading in this case was a matter of squishing it together and hoping for the best. To my mind, the only way to handle this dough was to press it into a lasagne pan and cut it into squares or rectangles. You could use a larger pan if you want to achieve a 1/4" thickness.

Digestives
From Say it With Cake by Edd Kimber

Makes 30 - 3"round cookies

1/3 cup steel cut oats

1 1/3 cup white flour

1 1/2 cups wheat flour

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking soda

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 cup + 1 Tblsp butter, diced and chilled

Line a lasagne pan with parchment paper. 

Pulse oats in the food processor until finely ground. Add the flours, cinnamon, baking soda and sugar and pulse to combine. Add the butter cubes and pulse until the dough comes together.

Transfer the dough to a work surface and knead until uniform. Press into the prepared pan and chill for 30 minutes. (If you like a challenge, you could form the dough into a ball, chill, then roll to 1/4' thickness and cut 3" rounds and bake on cookie sheets.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Bake for 15-20 minutes and check for doneness. The edges will be lightly brown and the surface golden. Let cool completely before cutting. Freeze any portion that will not be consumed in 3 days.