Black Treacle and oat digestives
The beautiful tin is enough reason to start baking with Lyle’s Black Treacle. It is so nice and shiny red with bold black letters and a proud lion in the middle. Fortunately, the taste is just as special as the tin. The thick syrup has a deep, earthy sweetness that is great for baking. Lyle’s Black Treacle can be found in English stores or ordered on line. If you cannot get hold of it at all, you can replace it with black strap molasses. I ground some oats for this cookie and together with the Treacle they make for a cookie that is both bold in flavour and texture. I had fun making the cookie T shaped, but of course you could just cut fingers out of the dough or bake round cookies: they taste just as nice and are a lot faster to make.
Black Treacle and oat digestive cookies
for about 25 cookies
50 grams of oats
50 grams wholemeal flour
100 grams plain flour
40 grams dark brown demerara sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
generous pinch of salt
40 grams of Treacle
100 grams of unsalted softened butter
1-3 tablespoons buttermilk milk
Grind the oats coarsely. Mix with the wholemeal flour, the plain flour, the demerara sugar, the baking powder and the salt. Add the treacle, the butter and 1 tablespoon of buttermilk and quickly knead into a ball. Add some more buttermilk if the dough is still crumbly. Press the dough into a disk and wrap in cling film. Leave to rest in the refrigerator for about 20 min.
Preheat the oven to 180 °C (360 °F). Take the dough from the fridge and place it on a sheet of baking paper. Cover with a large piece of clingfilm and roll out to 3 mm. This keeps the dough from sticking. You will not need to sprinkle the work surface with dough so it also prevents the dough from becoming to dry.
Draw a T on baking paper and cut out. Place the shape on the dough and cut around with a sharp knife. Gather the rest of the dough together and repeat. Put the cookies on a baking sheet covered with baking paper and bake for 15-20 minutes in the middle of the oven until the cookies are brown. Take them from the oven and let them cool on a rack.
This post is also available in: Dutch
