Healthy homemade chocolate digestives recipe

Ooh, this is such a good one! Who wouldn’t want to devour a batch of homemade chocolate digestives bickies for afternoon tea? Me, that’s who!

I first started tinkering around with this recipe when I discovered that our beloved McVities chocolate digestives contained palm oil in their list of ingredients. Not the sustainable kind, either*. Just regular orangutan habit-destroying palm oil. There’s no way am I buying them anymore!

Which is a great shame as those chocolate digestives have been a go-to biscuit option for us for years. When I think about all those years all I can think it how very sorry I am, orangutans. to try to make up for it, we made a donation to Orangutan Foundation International as a small but heartfelt apology.

* EDITED: A few weeks after this recipe was published, I was contacted by the PR company for McVities who said: ”

We don’t speak about it often, but want to make it clear, we’ve been a member of the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) organisation since 2007 and have been sourcing 100% RSPO certified palm oil since 2009. We recognise as a responsible business we need to continue to support the industry on its transformation journey; in addition to purchasing RSPO-certified palm oil, in 2018 pladis UK and Ireland became members of The Forest Trust.

Would it be possible if you could please amend the above note in bold to reflect the correct information? As we believe everyone has the right to be informed correctly, rather than hearsay. 

I have no idea why they wouldn’t “speak about this often” or why they don’t mention that their palm oil is sustainable on their packaging. Back to the recipe…

Our favourite biscuits are back

Then I created this homemade chocolate digestives recipe. After all, we could hardly be expected to make it through a winter without our favourite biscuits! Nothing beats a digestive dunked in your afternoon cuppa.

10 more biscuits that are brilliant for dunking: healthy-ish lunchbox biscuits to pack

My own version is packed with so much good stuff it’s practically a vegetable. Well, as vegetable-like as a chocolate biscuit could ever hope to be. The ingredients are simply:

• Wholemeal flour
• Rolled oats
• Seeds like pepitas, flaxseeds and sunflower seeds – you could mix this up with crushed nuts here, if you like
• Butter
• A little brown sugar (you can leave it out if you’re a saint)
• Milk – I use almond milk as I think it adds just that little extra nutty flavour, but regular whole milk is fine if that’s more your thing

Put it all together

Turns out they are dead-easy to make, so that’s another win. It literally takes minutes to throw the dry ingredients together, mix the two wet ingredients together and stir the lot together. Then you dollop, squash and bake.

The recipe makes plenty of biscuits, especially as one biscuit is enough to fill you up nicely at afternoon tea. (This may be because I make my biscuits extra large. Ha!) And don’t hesitate to double the quantities and make an extra batch as they keep really well on the bench. Or you can freeze them for laters.

I hope you love our homemade chocolate digestives as much as we do. Make them, then leave us a comment to let me know what you think!

Homemade chocolate digestives

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Yield: 16 biscuits

Homemade chocolate digestives

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 25 minutes

A healthier wholegrain version of store-bought chocolate digestives. We added a few extra seed to up the nutrition and general yumminess.

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Ingredients

• 1 cup wholemeal flour
• 1 cup rolled oats
• ½ cup mixed seeds (such as flax, pepita and sunflower)
• ½ tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
• ¼ cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 100 g cold unsalted butter, cubed
• 2 tbsp almond milk
• 150g dark chocolate

Instructions

Preheat oven to 170ºC and line 2 baking trays with baking paper.

Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl.

Combine the cooled melted butter with the nut milk then add to the dry ingredients.

Roll tablespoons of the mix into balls and place on the baking tray in batches of eight. Squash the balls using the back of a large metal spoon.

Bake for 15 minutes then switch off oven and allow biscuits to cool completely.

Melt the chocolate (short spurts in the microwave followed by a stir is easiest) and spread over the biscuits. You can use a fork to make the traditional digestives pattern in the chocolate, but I prefer a swirl. Allow chocolate to cool and harden, then dig in!

Notes

The biscuits will keep in an airtight container on the bench for about a week, or freeze for up to one month.

Pop one into the lunchbox as a treat for the kids.

You can substitute regular milk if almond milk isn't your thing.