Sunday 15 May 2011

Biscuits

I've been experimenting with baking biscuits that don't raise your blood glucose levels too much.

It's quite a specific challenge, but one I have a particular interest in.

My first attempts yesterday went pretty well, but needed some further honing - my chief taster deemed them too floury/dry.







I had another go this morning - much more successfully. I originally thought they were a bit sweet, but the 'team' deem that to be just my lame tastebuds :-)

So here are the results... I made pretty small quantities, as I was tasting loads of things at once and changing things as I went - the recipes are for a moderate quantity of each, but they would also scale up or down depending on what you want to do.

I made pretty small biscuits in all cases - personally, I prefer that approach - means you can have more helpings :-)
All of them have things in that will raise blood glucose a bit, but, particularly if eaten at mealtimes for pudding or similar, they shouldn't hurt too much!







Three different recipes:

Soft Chocolate Cookies
100g butter (I used salted - if you don't, you'll want to add a pinch of salt to the recipe)
40g fructose sugar (I got mine from Holland and Barratt - pretty sure some supermarkets have it too)
20g cocoa powder
120g ground almonds
20g plain flour

Cream the butter and sugar together.
Add the other ingredients (including salt if you used unsalted butter) and mix to form a fairly stiff dough.
Put teaspoons of the mixture onto a lined baking sheet.
I baked for about 15 minutes at 150 in my fan oven - you'd probably need it to be a bit hotter with no fan.
These were pretty nice plain, but, after they've cooled, you could dollop on a little bit of melted chocolate (mixed with butter if you want to reduce the sugar further, though it won't make *that* much difference) and top with fruit or nuts.
These, in particular, have very little in them to raise blood glucose excessively - of course they will a bit, but they didn't affect me too much at all.

Shortbread Type Biscuits
100g butter (as above)
60g fructose
120g plain flour
120g ground rice


Cream the butter and sugar together.
Add the other ingredients (including salt if you used unsalted butter) and mix to form a stiff dough.
Roll mixture into little balls and flatten into rounds on a lined baking sheet.
I didn't do it this time, but this recipe would lend itself really well to chocolate chips (plain chocolate won't raise blood glucose much in this) or nuts or similar.
Alternatively, if you make thumbprints in each biscuit before baking, you can put little splodges of jam in the imprints when you take them out of the oven - sugary, but only a very little bit.
Or, of course, just keep them plain.
As above, I baked for about 15 minutes at 150 in my fan oven - you'd probably need it to be a bit hotter with no fan.


Splodge Cookies
I was really pleased with the way these turned out. Can't decide whether these or the chocolate ones were my favourite.

100g butter (as above)
60g fructose
60g plain flour
60g ground rice
Cream the butter and sugar together.
Add the other ingredients (including salt if you used unsalted butter) and mix to form a soft dough.
Splodge teaspoons of the mixture onto a lined baking sheet.
As above, I baked for about 15 minutes at 150 in my fan oven - you'd probably need it to be a bit hotter with no fan.

I'm definitely going to do more of this - I already have a pretty good idea of how to make cakes that raise blood glucose a bit less. Cookies/biscuits are more of a challenge, but I'm quite inspired now - I have loads of ideas that I want to try :-)


1 comment:

  1. These all look lovely! I have been told that agave nectar is quite good in low GI recipes as well. Sainsbury's sells it, and it works well in cakey things.

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