My whole flat has become a test kitchen. I practically live in the kitchen with cake tins, ingredients, pots and pans spilling over into the living area (the only cooking free area is the bathroom). I’m gearing up for two big events in London next week . One of them being my Mash up dinner. The other an event for  the School of life Sunday sermon on Good Design held by Alice Rawsthorn, Design critic for the International Herald Tribune. I’ve been busy making or better said ‘designing’ THE biscuit. It took a lot of testing to get to the final product, at least a dozen tries.

The brief was to make a biscuit or cake that was delicious, traditional but not flamboyant. My initial research led me to Britain’s most popular biscuit, the chocolate digestive. 52 are consumed per second in Uk. That’s a lot of biscuits!

When McVitie’s first made the digestive in 1892, they claimed it aided your digestion, hence the name. This has since been scientifically proven to be untrue and that is when a light bulb lit up in my head.

Good design is not only about aethetics but function and now a days it’s great if it’s eco-friendly aswell. So why not make a digestive which actually incorporates ingredients that stimulate your digestion?

I first started looking into spices: aniseed, fennel and cumin, using them in a classic digestive recipe. But the taste was just too different. I then stumbled on linseed and oats which seemed perfect as they added a great nutty taste. However when I added them whole the biscuit was way too rustic. The ground version worked much better, mix in a little malt barley syrup for some malty taste and a couple of chunks of chocolate. And hey presto, I had a chocolate digestive with ‘digestive aiding’ ingredients.

After carefully balancing and mixing together the ingredients to create a delicious (of course it has to taste good, too!) biscuit.  I had to work on the shape and name. Keeping it to the classic round shape I just added a little slit, so you can clip it onto your cup of tea. I tried to be as eco-friendly as possible using organic, local/national or fairtrade produced ingredients where possible.  And being a true Brit the biscuit stands up to multiple tea dunking ! And that folks is how the Designtive was born.

If you fancy tasting them for yourself, come to the Good design sermon next Sunday the 28th. Hope to see you there!

Designtives
© 2009 Rachel Khoo. All rights reserved.
Makes 25

170g wholemeal flour (+ handful extra)
50g ground linseed
50g ground oats
85g golden caster sugar
50g barley malt syrup
115g salted butter, cubed
13 squares of chocolate, cute in half
1 egg

Mix together the flour, linseed, oats and sugar followed by the cubed butter. Create a crumbly/sandy mixture by rubbing the ingredients with your fingers and thumb. Once achieved, add the rest of the ingredients, mix together and form a ball. Flatten, put into a plastic freezer bag and refridgerate for at least 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 180°c. Dust your work surface with a little flour and roll out the dough to about 5mm thickness. Cut out the biscuits, press half a square of chocolate into the biscuit and place onto a tray with parchment paper. Reform, roll out the leftover dough and cut out more biscuits until you have used the dough up. Refridgerate the biscuits for 30mins before baking them at 180°c for 15-20mins or until golden around the edges and bottom.

Tags: Alice Rawsthorn, food design, International Herald Tribune, the school of life