Digestive Biscuits

I spent a summer in the UK a few years back and practically lived off McVities Digestive Biscuits. Cheap and easy to find in the UK, fairly expensive and hard to find in the US, so I decided to make them myself. I was not able to find a recipe that tasted enough like them, so I made my own recipe. They have been really popular with other McVitie lovers. Hope you like them, too!

• Ready In: 35 mins
• Serves: 6-8
• Yields: 12-16 biscuits

Ingredients

• 3⁄4 cup whole wheat flour
• 1⁄4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1⁄2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1⁄4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1⁄4 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1⁄4 cup  wheat bran
• 4  tablespoons butter
• 5  tablespoons brown sugar
• 1  tablespoon  Crisco
• 1⁄2 teaspoon vanilla
• 3  tablespoons half-and-half cream

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. In a large bowl, mix together the flours, bran, baking powder, baking soda, and cream of tartar with a pastry blender. Mix in sugar with the pastry blender. Mix in fats with the pastry blender. The mix at this point should be crumbly and uniform. Mix the vanilla in the half-n-half and add to the mix. Mix with pastry blender until it is uniform and resembles really soft playdoh.
3. You can at this point refrigerate for 20 minutes to make the dough easier to handle, but it is not necessary. Be sure to roll out dough between two pieces of waxed paper! Roll to approximately 1/8" thickness. Cut into rounds with cookie cutter about 2 1/2 inches in diameter (I used the ring off one of my canning jars).
4. Transfer to cookie sheets or baking stone and prick with a fork. Bake 15 to 18 minutes (adjust the baking time up to dry them out more if the biscuits are too soft and fluffy), or until golden. Let cool on wire rack.
5. Optional: spread the backs of the cooled biscuits with melted semi-sweet chocolate (as in chips - almost everyone has these for chocolate chip cookies). Set the biscuits chocolate side up on the rack until chocolate hardens.
6. Store in an airtight tin -if storage is even necessary! They will go fast.