Resolved

Don’t worry, lentil fans. This year’s recipe will be along shortly, but in the meantime I wanted to put up this recipe, since I had it ready to go.

In keeping with my custom of not sabotaging my coworker’s New Year’s resolutions no matter how fervently I personally reject the practice, my Sunday baking in January always focuses on whole grains, less sugar, and lower fat than the other 10 months of the year. (I repeat the process in May in case of pre-summer beach dieting.). These digestive biscuits are my first such offering for 2013, but they’re also one of my favorites year-round, thanks to their lovely crunchy-crumbly texture and not-too-sweet full-bodied wheatiness, to say nothing of how hard they ping my lifelong Anglophilia.

In addition to being perfect both for healthier eating plans and Doctor Who marathons, these are wonderfully low-effort, since the dough comes together beautifully in the food processor and is so easy to work with that the rolling and cutting process is quick and painless. If you want to be a bit more indulgent, you have the option of spreading them with a very thin coating of melted chocolate, but they’re pretty addictive plain with a cup of tea. Since they’re technically a cookie but really fall somewhere between a cookie and a whole wheat cracker, they also work quite well on a cheese plate, if you want to be a bit more sophisticated.

Digestive Biscuits
(Adapted from King Arthur Flour, The Baking Sheet Newsletter, Dec 1991)
Makes 4-5 dozen cookies

½ cup old fashioned rolled oats
1 cup white whole wheat flour
½ cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¾ teaspoon sea salt
¾ cup confectioner’s sugar
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature but not soft, in half-tablespoon-sized pieces
¼ cup low-fat milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

4-6 ounces milk or semi-sweet chocolate, chopped and melted (optional)

In a food processor, grind the oats until fine but not completely powdered, leaving some small bits of oat. Add the flours, baking powder, salt and sugar, and pulse a few times to combine. Scatter the butter pieces over the dry ingredients and pulse again until the mixture resembles rough cornmeal, with no large bits of butter visible. Mix the milk and vanilla together and pour through the processor’s feed tube while pulsing again, continuing to process until a homogenous dough forms and starts clumping around the blade.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured silicone mat or piece of parchment and roll to a thickness of approximately 1/8 inch, but no less (thinner cookies will burn too easily). Chill the dough for about 10 minutes to firm it back up before cutting.

Preheat oven to 350F and line 2-3 baking sheets with parchment paper.

Cut the rolled dough with 1 ½ to 2 inch round cookie cutters, transferring the rounds to the lined sheets. Re-roll as many times as necessary to use up the dough, chilling the dough again between rollings if the cookies become too soft to pick up easily.

Prick the cookies well with a fork and bake until pale gold all over but not too dark around the edges, 15-20 minutes. Cool completely on racks. If desired, the bottom of the cooled cookies can be spread with a thin layer of melted chocolate and marked decoratively, then left until the chocolate sets back up.

Unfrosted biscuits keep very well in airtight containers for a couple of weeks, while chocolate-covered cookies should be eaten within a few days, before the chocolate blooms.

Notes:

There’s no reason you couldn’t make these vegan with the use of vegan margarine or vegetarian shortening and a non-dairy milk, although in that case you’ll probably need to chill longer and more often, since the dough will be quicker to soften too much.

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A Slightly Different Take on Holiday Goodies

Every year, I participate in a Secret Santa exchange. Every year before this one, I have sent my giftee whichever cookies are in that year’s repertoire, but this year there was a hitch: I drew a giftee who can’t have sweets.

What to do? Simple enough: switch to crackers. I hadn’t made them before because I’ve always considered crackers to be a quick convenience, to be bought for having with cheese or butter and jam when a full meal isn’t called for. With cookie energy that needed repurposing, though, I went scavenging through my cookbooks for non-sugary equivalents that would demonstrate the same degree of care and cheer that I’d like to think my holiday cookies show. Knowing that the recipient likes cheese, I concentrated my search on cheese crackers, and got exceptionally lucky on the very first go.

Now, I will grant you that these cheddar crackers, spiked with chipotle and given extra depth with some whole wheat flour, don’t look all that exciting. The first one or two may not even seem very exciting. Tasty, crispy, and finally a little bit zippy, yes, but exciting? Except…

Except that you will rapidly find yourself compulsively popping one after another until half the batch is gone, because the heat is seductively cumulative and the crunch is thoroughly addictive. If you’re looking for snacks to go along with your New Year’s Eve cocktails, you can’t go wrong with this grown-up version of the goldfish crackers children devour with similarly insatiable greed.

I’m delighted the challenge could be met so easily. I think these crackers are every bit as special as a holiday cookie, and I’m pleased to report that my Secret Santa giftee thought so too!

Spicy Cheddar Crackers
(Adapted from Cheddar Cheese Crackers in Bernard Clayton’s New Complete Book of Breads)
Makes around four dozen teeny nibbles

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup white whole wheat flour
1/4 teaspoon salt, plus extra for sprinkling
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon chipotle chile powder
1 1/2 ounces very sharp Cheddar cheese, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons boiling water
1/2 teaspoon molasses
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
Additional room-temperature water as needed

Whisk together all the dry ingredients until the chipotle is evenly distributed, then place in the bowl of a food processor. Add the cheese cubes and pulse until finely ground.

Stir the boiling water, molasses and butter together in a glass measuring cup until the butter has melted. With the processor running, pour the mixture through the feed tube. If the dough doesn’t come together, add more water, a tablespoon at a time. Once the dough forms a ball, process for an additional 20 seconds to knead. Tip the ball onto a sheet of plastic wrap, form into a flat disk, and refrigerate at least 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 400F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Divide dough into four equal pieces. Leaving the other three wrapped while you work, shape the first piece into a cylinder and then flatten it out on a work surface. Roll out to a rectangle 14-18 inches long and around 6 inches wide, and 1/16 inch thick. Fold into thirds, turn a quarter-turn, and roll back out to a rectangle 1/16 inch thick. Transfer to one-half of one of the prepared baking sheets, and repeat the process with a second piece of dough, setting it on the sheet beside the first.

Dock each sheet of dough thoroughly with a fork, then use a pizza cutter or sharp knife to trim any scraggly edges in order to get a neat rectangle. Cut each sheet lengthwise into quarters, then divide each crosswise into an even number of small inch-long squares or rectangles. Sprinkle with the additional salt.

Bake until well browned and crisp, 10-12 minutes depending on the thickness of the dough. Place the sheet on a rack and cool completely. Repeat with the final two pieces of dough.

The crackers will theoretically stay fresh for weeks in an airtight container, but I really wouldn’t plan on them lasting out a single week.

Notes:

It occurred to me as I was rolling out the third of the four pieces that this dough is more than resilient enough to stand up to the pasta machine, which would make the rolling out much, much faster.

Should you be so inspired, you could find tiny little fish-shaped cookie cutters and make your very own goldfish for grown-ups.

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