This recipe is a low-carb version of chocolate digestive biscuits.
In Britain, digestive biscuits are a national treasure loved by everyone. If you are not from England, they are semi-sweet biscuits with fibery texture, traditionally made with wholemeal flour.
The name "digestive" dates back to 19 th century, when these biscuits were believed to have antacid properties because they contain sodium bicarbonate.
They are great for dunking in your tea, and are often crumbled for use in other recipes, for example, cheesecake base.
I think they might be similar to Graham crackers in USA but I am not sure (if anyone knows, please leave a comment below and let us know).
You can get plain versions of these, and chocolate covered versions. I am of course going for the latter!
Low-carb substitute for wholemeal flour
I started looking into low-carb versions of digestive biscuits when working on my cheesecake recipes. After much experimenting, I think a mixture of ground almonds and flaxmeal creates a convincing substitute for brown flour and bran. Biscuits come out with a fibery taste and coarse texture similar to the real thing.
Sugar substitutes
I tend to use a mixture of erythritol and Stevia in most of my low-carb baking, such as Sukrin Plus or Truvia (in USA, Swerve is a good brand). This sweetener mix has zero digestible carbs and is suitable for diabetics.
For this recipe, I also added a little bit of Sukrin Gold, which is a brown sugar substitute. Sukrin Gold contains a small amount (3g per 100g) of tagatose, which is a type of sugar. However, the quantity is so small that overall it adds less than 1g of net carbs to the recipe. It does caramelise nicely and so improves the texture of the biscuits. You can skip this step and use more of the erythritol/Stevia instead.
If you have a different preferred sugar substitute, use that instead, but it must be granulated - liquid drops won't work with this recipe.
Thickeners
You will definitely need to add some sort of thickener to the recipe, otherwise it won't hold together and will crumble away on you. I used arrowroot, other options could be guar gum or xanthan gum.
Chocolate glazing
These biscuits taste quite nice on their own, but you can also cover them in chocolate for a bit of extra oomph. I prepared my glazing using sugar-free chocolate (100% cacao solids), cacao butter and coconut oil. All of these ingredients are solid at room temperature, so once cooled, they create an additional strong layer to hold the biscuits shape in place.
Oven temperature
Everyone's oven is different. I have learned this the hard way.
So the temperature provided in the recipe is for guidance only - please keep checking your biscuits and take them out when they are golden, before they start turning too dark.
Ingredients
Instructions
