Spelt, orange and maple biscuits

These are one tough cookie! Not to eat, I would not give you a tough biscuit recipe to make, but I personally found them tricky to make, especially as I was expecting them to be simple and quick to do.

The recipe states that once the dough is brought together to chill it for 30 minutes and then roll it out. Mine did not roll. It crumbled. Only the heat of my hands would bring it together enough to stamp out. Although I measured everything I suspect maybe my dough was a little dry and maybe a splash more orange juice and oil would have solved the problem.

Once they were baked however these biscuits held together perfectly well. They are good biscuits for those who do not have a sweet tooth, or for those of us that do but fancy a change, they do not contain much sugar and the main flavour comes from the orange and the nuttiness of the spelt four.

Spelt, orange and maple biscuits (slightly adapted from Biscuit by Miranda Gore Browne)

250g wholemeal spelt flour
50g oats
60ml olive oil
50g caster sugar
2 tablespoons maple syrup
zest and juice of 1 orange

Mix the flour and oats together in a bowl. Mix the remaining ingredients together and then add to the bowl, mix until a dough comes together. If it is a little dry maybe try a smidge more oil/juice. Divide the dough into two and shape into a flattish disk. Wrap in clingflim and chill for at least 30 minutes. 

Preheat the oven to 180C/160C FAN and line two baking sheets with baking parchment. Take your dough and roll it to about 3 cm thick and using a cutter of your choice cut out biscuits. I had problems rolling and ended up kind of squishing my dough out. 

Place the cut out biscuits onto the prepared baking sheets and bake in the preheated oven for ~10 minutes until lightly golden. Transfer the biscuits to a wire rack and allow to cool. 

I kept them in an airtight tin and thought that after day 3 they were past there best, M thought no such thing however and polished off the remaining few on day four!

I really like spelt flour at the moment and plan on trying it in a few more bakes soon