Gluten-free Cooking for Kids
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Digestives
A recent thread on the 
These are great biscuits, lowish in sugar, great with a cup of tea, just the thing for the morning school run and completely delicious served with a wedge of Cheddar cheese. You can dip them in chocolate too....but best of all, they are really easy to make. Yield
Preparation time
Ingredients
Directions
Preheat oven to 180 C. Toast the almonds and pumpkin seeds on separate shallow trays for about 10 minutes until fragrant. Leave to cool.
Place the almonds in a food processor and blitz or pulse until fairly fine. Add the caster sugar and pulse again until the mixture resembles fine sand. Do not do this when the almonds are hot as you may end up with a nut butter! Now add the flour along with the cinnamon, salt and bicarbonate of soda and pulse once or twice to combine. Now add the diced butter (best if the butter is really cold) and again pulse until the mixture resembles damp sand. Remove the mixture and place into a large mixing bowl.Add the roasted pumpkin seeds and then add the beaten egg. Mix with a fork until the mixture forms a soft dough. It may be a bit wet and sticky so add just enough flour to bring the dough together. Flatten it out to make a circle and then wrap the dough in cling film. Place the dough in the fridge to chill for a minimum of two hours. You can leave it overnight or for a few days if you prefer.
Notes
You can substitute other nuts and seeds for the almonds or pumpkin seeds if you prefer. I was a bit concerned that the children would turn their noses up at "pumpkin seeds" but in fact, they didn't really notice them. They add a lovely crunch to the biscuit and of course add extra nutrition in the way of vitamins and minerals.
I recently used pecans in this recipe and I can tell you, they were delicious. You may have noticed the rather charming circus animal shaped biscuits in the photograph. My sister brought these a few weeks ago and they are so cute. I think she got them at Williams and Sonoma in the U.S. These are definately worth tracking down, as the cute shapes meant the cookies did not require 'selling', they just disappeared off the plate.
This is a great recipe and
This is a great recipe and I'm excited to have finally found it. Now I don't have to go to the store once a month to buy them but rather have my once a month cooking party and kiss my digestive problems goodbye.
Digestives
I was really interested when I saw this recipe - the GF digestives I've had haven't been very exciting and as with most free-from foods the ingredients lists often frighten me.
I gave these a try and was impressed with the results.
I used ready ground almonds and added a bit more flour as the dough was a bit too sticky to make into a ball. I used half of the dough after a couple of hours' refrigeration but it was still quite sloppy. The following day however it was in a much better state and much easier to roll out.
I'm going to try these again soon but plan to make a few changes:
Smaller seeds (linseeds?) so that you get a few more for each bite - more than 50g as well.
Using brown sugar instead of caster sugar to make the colour and texture more interesting.
Using more interesting GF flour (last time I used a mixture I'd made up of white rice flour, brown rice flour, tapioca, potato starch, cornflour). Perhaps teff as I find this gives a good wholesome flavour?
Perhaps replace a small proportion of the almonds with dessicated coconut.
I also think the dough might freeze well, meaning that rather than making up a whole batch I could just make a few when I felt like it. I found they went soft fairly quickly, which wasn't unpleasant but not what I would have liked.
All food for thought... would welcome any feedback!
adapting recipes
Hi Dawn,
Thank you for trying the recipe out with ground almonds and for your ideas for developing the recipe further. I was very interested to hear that ground almonds worked and not surprised to hear that you would require more flour to make the dough less wet. If you are using ground almonds, I would be tempted to use 1/2 an egg- perhaps just the yolk, to add richness, and not the white which will contribute to a wetter dough. Adding too much flour will significantly affect the texture of the biscuit and also it's keeping qualitites. From what you have indicated, the fact the biscuits went soft is due to too much liquid. (I was surprised to see that the original recipe when baked, held up beautifully for over a week in an airtight plastic container. They were still crisp and the flavour was fine too), Definately leaving the dough to chill overnight will help with this as the liquid will be absorbed in the dough and dry it out a bit more. Freezing the dough in a log shape is also something I do, and it does allow you to cut off biscuits as and when you need them. In fact in the first few trials of this recipe, that is what I did. You need to be patient and allow the dough to soften sufficiently so you can cut them. I wasn't that patient and found the dough crumbled too much. It didn't matter too much as I just squashed the dough back into a roundish shape and they baked okay.
I like the idea of adding some teff flour to boost the nutritional content. Teff flour absorbs more liquid, so if you do go this route, you will probably need to use the whole egg. Adding brown sugar will add more moisture to the dough and nutrionally I don't believe there will be that much of an advantage. It will also make the biscuits very dark in colour, which to my mind, is not that attractive. If you go done the route of using something like Agave Nectar, then I certainly would leave the egg out. Not too sure about the lindseeds, they can be a little bitter. I would be tempted to add one of those seed mixtures (Linwoods) to boost the nutritional content. Again take into account how this will affect the overall moisture of the dough. Dessicated coconut sounds good too but in moderation. Too much and the whole biscuit can go a little grainy which can be unpleasant. As always it's a question of balancing out texture and flavours. You will need to experiment to find what flavour combinations work best and then what adjustments you will need to make to improve the texture and keeping qualities.
I look forward to hearing what happens with the next batch.
All the best,
Adriana
That is really a wonderful
That is really a wonderful recipe. I have always loved munching in biscuits and similar eatables. I would love to try and make these myself. Being a health conscious person I usually make use of a natural sweetener agave in all recipes that require the use of sugar. Agave is a natural sweetener with all of the good taste of sugar sans extra calories.
Pamella