afternoon tea Archives - Miss Foodwise

Digestive Biscuits

Regula — Fri, 09 Feb 2018 10:21:43 +0000

Update on my life: it’s been a little quiet on here because we’ve just bought a new house, sold our current one and are preparing for our move to the woods in April! Right now I’m planning my vegetable garden and new kitchen which is very exciting indeed. My aim is to go for durable and craftsmanship. The latter will probably mean I’ll be able to afford the kitchen cabinets this year (at least I hope so, or it will be vegetable crates!!) and the doors will maybe have to wait until next year. For my fittings I’m going for old established companies who have proven themselves with their quality. My impressive Esse stove will be the main feature, wood fired and surprisingly rated A+ with practically non-existent CO emissions due to new techniques. It’s an exciting time and I can’t want to show you how I get on, especially with vegetable growing! Also, I’m hosting a popup dinner in London 16/2 with Ms Marmite lover at her Underground Restaurant, it will be a (vegetarian) Flemish feast with Belgian beer! To book go here >

But on to the news of the day and that is Digestives!

An icon in British biscuit fare, it is illegal to call a digestive ‘digestive’ in the US and it could be one of the reasons the Beatles* split… Impressive for a rather plain looking tea dunker, but yet the biscuit is so adored that the chocolate covered one was elected as the number one biscuit to dip in your cuppa. This leaves the Rich Tea (see my recipe here) on second place, followed by the Hobnob and the plain digestive in fourth place. Shortbread to my amazement came in on ninth place, but then again I do never dunk a shortbread finger into my hot drink even though it’s shape lends it to this action perfectly.

A digestive and a hobnob are quite similar, but the hobnob uses rolled oats and white self-raising flour, while the digestive calls for wholemeal flour and baking powder. Digestives were developed in the 1830’s by two Scottish doctors in the aim to create a biscuit that could aid digestion, hence the name ‘Digestive’. The most popular Digestives are those produced by McVitie’s who started baking them in 1892. However, a recent glance at the packaging revealed their use of palm oil instead of good old butter, something that really infuriates me. It is probably cheaper and more stable to use palm oil, but really when I treat myself to a stack of biccies I want butter and no compromise.

Digestives were often called malt biscuits and the original patent granted for them was titled “Making Malted Bread”. Cassell’s Universal Cookery Book from 1894 gives a recipe for ‘Malt Biscuits’ following: “the recipe for Digestive Biscuits with malt as below may be followed…” He suggests that using ground carraway seeds are a suitable flavouring for persons who suffer from flatulence, but he also mentions that any other spice is optional too.

Recipes for Digestives feature humble ingredients and it should remain so, as my lovely friend Felicity Cloake puts it so well in her piece for the Guardian:

A digestive is not a biscuit that should draw attention to itself.

But on my quest to create my favourite Digestive I did sneak in a little more fancy ingredient and that’s ground up roasted pecans. In the recipe below I’ll give you the option to leave them out, but I find it gives something extra to the biscuit without making it too fancy, it makes it more filling requiring only one, maybe two, instead of a half packet if you skipped lunch. But feel free to leave it out. I also add oats, which is common these days with home made Disgestives. If you want to mimmic the store bought biscuits just use the wholemeal flour.

Enjoy these biscuits, the dough is easily made in advance if you want to serve them freshly baked to guests. They keep for 4 days in an airtight container or a ziplock bag.

*Now about the Beatles… I’m not making this up, the digestive incident was noted down by recording engineer Geoff Emerick in his book Here, There, and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles. According to Emerick, Yoko Ono (John Lennon’s wife in case you’re from Mars) “was in the recording studio and at one point helped herself to Harrison’s box of McVitie’s while the Beatles were in the control room listening to a playback of the song they’d just recorded. Harrison got angry at Ono, and his subsequent outburst caused Lennon to lose his temper in response.” source

Further reading:

Recipe on this website: Rich Tea Biscuits

How to cook the perfect Digestive biscuit / Felicity Cloake for the Guardian

Chocolate Digestive is nation’s favourite dunking biscuit / The Telegraph

You’ll soon get seven fewer digestives in a packet / Metro

Digestives

Recipe

Makes about 40 biscuits, recipe can be halved.

40 g pecans (you can omit these and use 40 g extra flour instead)
150g unsalted butter at room temperature
100g demerara sugar
2 medium eggs
1 tsp seasalt
1 tsp baking powder
150 g rolled oats (small variety, not the large ones) or rough porridge oats
260g wholemeal wheat or spelt flour

Method

Roast pecans if you are using them, on a baking tray in the oven for 10 minutes on 200°C. Line two trays with baking parchment. Keep a +- 6 cm cookie cutter ready.

When the pecans (if using them) are cooled, blitz in a mixer until they resemble coarse flour but stop before you see it go oily.

Mix butter and sugar together (in a mixer if you have one) until creamy and add the eggs one by one. Then add the baking powder and start adding the pecans, salt, oats and flour teaspoon by teaspoon. It will take a while for the mixture to come together. The mixture will appear very dry at first but do not be tempted to add milk or water.

Use immediately or wrap in clingfilm and keep in the fridge for a short while or a couple of hours if you must.

When ready to bake, preheat your oven to 200°C if you haven’t already for the pecans. Knead for a few seconds and pat the dough down (the less rolling the better), place on a gently floured working surface or baking parchment and dust with flour too to prevent the rolling pin from sticking. Roll out to half a centimeter and cut out the cookies, transferring them to the lined baking tray. It’s okay to knead leftover dough back together and roll it back out to cut out more cookies, keep doing so until you have used up your dough.

Bake in the middle of your oven for 10-13 minutes, 13 minutes means darker biscuits which I prefer, they keep better too.

Pour yourself a hot drink and dunk your biscuit in it!

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The perfect scone is a joyeus thing

Regula — Thu, 27 Aug 2015 13:52:00 +0000

While I am wondering where summer is hiding, and rain is dripping down on my evergreen garden, it feels like the perfect time to start baking scones for tea. How else will you lock out the dreariness that comes with the looming end of joyeus long days, summer dresses and dainty shoes. There has to be tea, and something to go with it.

Tea was introduced to England by Catherine of Braganza, the Portuguese wife of Charles II, in the mid 1600s. Her dowry included a chest of tea.

It isn’t certain when exactly the afternoon tea ritual was introduced. The most popular tale is that the 7th Duchess of Bedford had invented it in the 1840’s to fight a ‘sinking feeling’ during the late afternoon. Knowing that in the 18th century people had to wait for dinner until eight o’ clock after having breakfast, I would have had many sinking feelings in the afternoon as well.

The Duchess would have had a tray with tea, bread and butter in her room in the afternoon and soon she started to invite friends to have tea and refreshments with her as well.

By the 1880’s it became a social event and soon the etiquette surrounding a proper teatime occasion was born.

There should be fresh water in the teapot at all times, and loose-leaf tea is believed to be best. The tea caddy should always be placed closest to the host to show that she or he is in charge. On the tea tray should be the teapot, a sugar bowl with sugar tongs or a spoon if cubes aren’t used, a milk jug, a tea strainer, a bowl for the used tea leaves, a dish with lemon wedges, a lemon fork and a pitcher of hot water to dilute the tea if a guest would require it. On the tea table: teacups and saucers, forks and spoons, small cake plates, napkins – preferably linen. A plate filled with sandwiches, warm scones and small cakes. A pot of the best jam, double cream or clotted cream each with a spoon.

Then there’s that other thing, ‘the cream or jam first’ debate, that Devon and Cornwall have been fighting over for decades. I guess it is no longer about what’s proper but how one likes his scone. I like to break my scone in pieces bit by bit, then I spread on a layer of jam (and when that jam is home-made raspberry jam it can be some kind of heaven) then spoon on a generous dollop of clotted cream.

I believe a scone shouldn’t be too sweet, that way you can generously spread it with cream and jam without feeling too guilty or going into a sugar coma after 1 scone.

The secret to the best risen scone is not to overwork the dough and not to turn the cutter while cutting out your scones.

This is my perfect scone recipe, I like them rough instead of soft, with a crumbly outside and a soft inside. Just like I remember my first scone and the scones I enjoy most at my favourite tea-room.

Makes 10-12 scones

450g self raising flour

150 g unsalted butter – room temperature

40 g sugar

2 medium eggs, beaten

a tiny pinch of salt

90ml milk

1 egg, for egg washing

Method

Preheat the oven to 220°C/425°F/gas mark 7

Line two baking trays with baking parchment.

1. Put the flour into a bowl and add the butter and rub it in until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

2. Stir in the sugar.

3. Add the egg and gradually add the milk stirring it in until you have a soft, slightly sticky dough.

4. Turn the dough out on to a generously floured working surface and gently knead it for a minute until it ceases to be sticky but still soft.

5. Now flatten it to a thickness of 2cm. It is better to do this with your hands as opposed to a rolling pin, this will help the scones rise better.

6. Use a 5cm (or use a larger one for larger scones) cookie cutter to stamp out the scones by pushing it straight down into the dough without turning it, then lift it straight out. This will provide a better and more even rise as well.

7. Push the leftover dough together and knead lightly, add currants if you like and flatten again and cut out more scones.

8. Arrange the scones on your prepared baking tray and brush the tops with beaten egg.

9. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes in the middle of your oven until risen and golden.

10. When ready transfer to a wire rack to cool. When cooled, cover them with a tea towel to keep them nice and moist.

Serve warm, reheated in a warm oven, or cold, with clotted cream or whipped double cream and the best raspberry jam you can find or freshly crushed raspberries …

You can freeze scones perfectly, just defrost the evening before in the fridge and warm as suggested above before serving.

Part of this article first appeared on the Denby UK Blog 10/08/15

Enjoy!

You might also like

Cornish splits

A perfectly simple white loaf

Hot Cross Buns

EDITED

While moving my blog the comments on my last few posts got lost, I’m so sorry if you are looking for your comment and it isn’t there. I’m really sad about losing our conversations!

The post The perfect scone is a joyeus thing appeared first on Miss Foodwise.

Rich Tea Biscuits – proven the best dunker

Regula — Tue, 03 Mar 2015 22:35:00 +0000

The question is… are you a Digestive or Rich Tea kind of person.

Anyone who loves to dunk a biscuit in their hot drink will have an answer for you straight away. Tea and biscuits are as essential to Britain’s cultural history as the Queen, the moody skies of Turner, pudding and queuing.

FOOD52 asked me to investigate the Rich Tea biscuit, and to provide you with the recipe to enjoy this quintessentially biscuit at home.

Britain is a tea drinking nation and has been since tea was introduced in the 17th century during the reign of Charles II. Naturally biscuits would soon be dunked in the delicate porcelain teacups which were produced for those who could afford this absolute luxury.

Rich Tea’s have a plain flavour which makes them ideal for dunking and getting the flavour of your hot drink soaked into the biscuit. Scientists also proved in may last year that Rich Tea biscuits are in fact the superior dunker. This because of its close texture and lower fat and sugar content. The Digestive crumbles whilst the Rich Tea snaps, and it is that snap a lot of people enjoy as part of their dunking ritual. Research showed that while the Digestive takes five second until it starts to wobble, the Rich Tea can stay in shape for a whopping 20 seconds.

Both these biscuits have a long history. The Digestive is said to have been developed by Scottish doctors in 1839 and a patent was granted in 1890, while the Rich Tea is believed to date back to 17th century Yorkshire. What they have in common is its use, not just as dunkers, they were both served in the afternoon as a sweet, yet slightly savoury biscuit to get through the last few hours until dinner.

Another pointer for the Rich Tea team came when Prince William requested a Rick Tea biscuit cake for his grooms cake at the royal wedding. 1,700 biscuits and 40 pounds of chocolate were used to create this fridge cake which is reported to be a favourite tea-time treat of the Queen herself too.

With the royals and nearly half of the British population approving them we need to give home made Rich Tea biscuits a go. They are definitely more rustic than the smooth Rich Tea’s by the favoured iconic British biscuit brands, but all the same they dunk just as well. My advise is to dunk long and enjoy the soaked biscuit to the full.

What do you need

makes 22-24 6cm wide biscuits

280 g plain white flour

1tbsp – 20 gr of baking powder

0,5 tsp – 5gr seasalt

3 tsp – 30 gr cane sugar

65 g butter

150 ml cold milk

Method

To prepare, preheat your oven to 200°C and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. Cut the butter into small cubes, transfer it to the bowl, and start rubbing the butter into the flour until you get a mixture that resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Pour in the milk and use your fingers to mix it together until it becomes a dough. Press and knead briefly.

Turn out the dough onto a floured surface, divide it in half to make it easier to work with, and roll out half of it as thinly as possible. (Keep in mind that the biscuits will rise and be twice the height!) Using a biscuit or cookie cutter, cut the dough into individual 6cm circles. Repeat with the other half of the dough.

Prick the biscuits all over with a fork and transfer to your lined baking sheet. Bake the biscuits until lightly golden but not brown. This should take around 10 minutes. Remove them from the oven and let them cool on a baking rack.

In the meantime…

Boil fresh water, place tea bag in your cup, pour hot water over it. Wait. Now break a Rich Tea biscuit in two, enjoy the snap, and dunk.

Enjoy.

What is your favourite tea biscuit?

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