Holiday biscuits with the kids - 'Safe as houses chocolate digestives'

If you were to look at  a poll of Britain's favourite biscuits I'm sure Chocolate digestives would be somewhere in the top ten. They are without doubt my daughter's favourite and she especially loves one with a nice cuppa in the afternoon when she gets home from school!

Kate Shirazi

I suggested to her a couple of days ago that if she fancied doing some baking why not try making the homemade variety of her favourite biscuit, especially as I'd had my eye on a recipe by the fabulous Kate Shirazi for quite some time! I've got two Kate Shirazi books: Chocolate Magic (2010) http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chocolate-Magic-Kate-Shirazi/dp/1862058814/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1345410719&sr=8-2 and Baking Magic (2010) http://www.amazon.co.uk/Baking-Magic-Kate-Shirazi/dp/186205889X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1345410800&sr=1-1 and every time I flick through and read the recipes, she makes me smile with her wit and slightly nonchalant and irreverent tone. For Kate it's about what suits you and she's not afraid of the odd 'kitsch' cake or 'kooky' biscuits. I've tried several of her recipes and my favourites in Chocolate Magic are the Chocolate fondants on page 39, these are very well behaved with a lovely gooey centre, can also be prepared a couple of days ahead; and the Chocolate peanut butter cups on page21 (who needs Reeses Peanut butter cups when you can make your own at home to serve as delightful petit fours?!) Overall, Kate's recipes are generally clear and she also specifies weights and measurements using American terms (cups etc) as well as in metric and imperial.

The following recipe proved to be straightforward and an enjoyable experience for my daughter:

Safe as houses chocolate digestives (Copyright Kate Shirazi, 2010)

Makes about 14 biscuits
100g wholemeal flour
40g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp oats
120g butter, softened
100g soft light brown sugar
4tbsp milk
200g milk or plain chocolate

Checking the ingredients

Measuring the flours

Creaming the butter and sugar

Quickly kneading the dough

Cutting out the biscuits

1. Preheat oven to 190 degrees and line two baking sheets.
2. Mix together the flours, baking powder and oats in a large bowl.
3. In another bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy, then add the flour mixture to this.
4. Add the milk a little at a time, until you have a thick dough.
5. Turn dough out onto floured surface and give it a quick knead until its smooth, then roll out to about 3mm thick and cut into discs. Place discs onto baking sheets, prick all over with a fork and bake for 15 minutes, or until golden.
6. Transfer biscuits to a wire rack to cool. When cold, melt the chocolate and spread onto one side of the biscuit.

Cooling biscuits

Spreading on chocolate

A plate full of yumminess. We did half plain chocolate and half milk chocolate.

We loved these biscuits! Particularly as we made sure that they had thick layers of chocolate on them! One word of caution though, add the milk a bit at a time. We only used three tablespoons and the dough was quite sticky, four tablespoons would have made it very difficult to work with. Also personally, I prefer plain chocolate digestives, milk digestives are a bit too sweet for me and as Kate Shirazi says herself:

"I would add, though, that there is a very good reason you don't get white chocolate digestives in the shops. Nasty." Page 93

At some stage I've promised my son we'd do his favourite biscuits, Custard Creams.