Types of biscuits and cookies

Types of biscuits and cookies

Drop Cookies: Simple to prepare by dropping spoonful of dough onto baking sheet. Examples include chocolate chip cookies and oatmeal cookies.

Refrigerator Cookies: Also known as sliced cookies. Preparation involves chilling the dough, slicing into thin pieces and baking.

Rolled Cookies: Dough is rolled out and shapes are cut using cookie cutters. Shortbread and gingerbread men fall into this category.

Moulded Cookies: Dough is shaped by hand into desired form before baking. Example includes peanut butter cookies.

Pressed Cookies: Achieved by pressing dough through a cookie press to create different shapes. Spritz cookies are a prime example.

Bar Cookies: Involve spreading dough or batter in a pan and then cutting into bars when baked, such as brownies.

Sandwich Cookies: Consist of a filling between two cookies like custard creams or Oreos.

No-bake Cookies: These cookies are not baked and are typically made from cereal and oats like rice krispie treats.

Classic Biscuits and their Characteristics

Digestive Biscuit: A semi-sweet biscuit, containing a blend of wholemeal and white flours. Its distinctive texture is down to a mix of bicarbonate of soda and malic acid.

Shortbread: Originating in Scotland, it’s composed of three main ingredients: butter, sugar, and flour. The crumbly texture is a direct result of high fat from butter.

Gingernut: Known for its hard texture and strong ginger flavour. Additionally, they will often contain syrup and brown sugar.

Rich Tea: Known for its simple, plain flavour. Mostly made from wheat flour, sugar, vegetable oil and malt extract.

Jammie Dodgers: A type of sandwich biscuit with a raspberry or strawberry filling. It’s a shortbread-style biscuit with a heart-shaped jam-filled centre.

Hobnobs: Made from jumbo rolled oats, jumbo wholemeal flakes, white self-raising flour, they’re quite hard but crumbly in texture.

Bourbon Biscuit: A sandwich style biscuit with chocolate buttercream filling. Contains a cocoa-flavoured biscuit base.

Remember that biscuits are generally either crispy and crunchy or short and crumbly in texture. The texture is often due to the baking process and combination of ingredients used.