Gluten Free Digestive Biscuits

Recipe

This gluten free take on the old favourite digestive biscuit ticks all the boxes. Whether you like them plain or coated in chocolate, these biscuits are golden with a crisp texture and all of the flavour with none of the wheat. Perfect for an afternoon treat or your next cheesecake base!

The Ingredients

One of the most important ingredients in the traditional digestive biscuit is wheat germ. That's what gives the biscuits their nutty, wholesome taste and wholegrain texture. Obviously, wheat germ is a no-go for anyone avoiding gluten, so recreating these biscuits, and specifically the taste and texture of these biscuits, without wheat is no small feat.

I've used a couple of tricks to replace that wheaty taste in this recipe:

1. Sorghum flour: sorghum flour is the closest to wheat flour in terms of flavour, in my opinion. Sorghum makes up the majority of the flour in this biscuit dough, and it does a pretty great job at bringing that nutty, golden flavour. If you can't get your hands on sorghum flour you can use brown rice flour instead. It will give a lighter, less flavourful result, but it will still be wonderful.

2. Quinoa flakes: while quinoa has a strong, distinctive flavour that can detract from many bakes, they bring important texture here. The quinoa flakes replace a bit of that fibrous texture you feel in traditional digestives, but I've kept the quantity low enough that the flavour doesn't get in the way.

3. Almond meal: I've included just a touch of almond meal here too, just to amp up the nuttiness a bit more. If you can't eat almonds just replace them with more sorghum flour.

How to Make Gluten Free Digestive Biscuits

While I've made these biscuits sound pretty complex in their development, the process of making them is delightfully simple. This biscuits dough starts with beating softened butter with brown sugar either with a hand mixer or by hand until it's just smooth - you don't even need to beat it until light and fluffy - and then beating in an egg until smooth. We then combine all the dry ingredients, add them in and stir until you have a soft biscuit dough. Thirty minutes in the fridge and it's ready to go!

Digestive biscuits usually have a decent thickness to them, so I roll mine to around 6mm thick. The dough can be a little bit sticky (especially if you use brown rice flour instead of sorghum), so I like to use a piece of floured baking paper on the surface as extra insurance against sticky situations. If you make sure to pick the dough and shift it around, re-flouring as necessary you should be fine. I use a 7cm round cutter to cut these biscuits, and as a final step before baking I prick each of them three times with a fork. This helps the biscuits to bake evenly for a crisp texture throughout.

I find I need two large baking trays for a batch of digestive biscuits, and because my oven doesn't heat particularly evenly I do need to swap them around halfway through baking for even browning. Baking should take between 20 - 22 minutes, depending on your oven. Finally, I like to leave the biscuits to cool for 5 minutes on the trays, and then they're really easy to lift onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Storage

As an added bonus these digestive biscuits keep exceptionally well. If you keep them in an airtight container at room temperature they should last for a couple of weeks at least.

I've always found that digestive biscuits are a strangely comforting treat (especially when coated in chocolate), so a world without them doesn't seem fair at all. Whether you make them as a chocolatey snack or a delicious base for a dessert, I'm sure these gluten free digestive biscuits will fill that biscuit shaped hole in your heart!