Biscuits (cookies) turning out more cake-like than biscuity

Question

Yesterday, for the first time ever, I tried baking some biscuits. I found a suitable recipe for some malted milk biscuits (I love malt), and followed it almost exactly; I endeavour to make everything sugar-free (and when I say 'sugar', I mean fructose), so I substituted the sugar with Xylitol. This is the recipe and method I followed:

• 125g butter
• 2.5 cups self-raising flour
• 1/2 cup xylitol
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 3 heaped tbsp malt extract

I mixed the butter (room temp.) & xylitol; then added the egg; then added the flour 1 cup at a time, followed by the salt; then the malt, 1 tbsp at a time. I then chilled it for half an hour, cut into shapes, chilled for another 15 minutes (it was pretty warm), and then put in the oven at 160c (fan) for 15 minutes.

They came out fine, but they had definitely risen (they were rolled out to about 0.5cm and rose in the middle to about 1.5cm) and the texture was more like a stiff cake than a snappy biscuit (they should be more like a stiff, crumbly ginger-snap texture).

I suspected it might have been the self-raising flour, so I did a second batch with plain flour, and although they didn't rise, they still came out just as cake-like.

I've read (at least) three different things that apparently affect the texture of a biscuit:

1. The temperature is usually hotter and baked faster (180c for 10 minutes, for example);
2. Adding more sugar (although, since xylitol has a 'cooling' mouthfeel (as well as other effects...) I don't want to simply dump more in);
3. The creaming method.

I've seen the creaming method mentioned a few times, but never with any specifics or directions, and unfortunately, as a biscuit-baking n00b, I don't know how to fix this issue.

tl;dr my biscuits aren't snappy - how do I fix?

Answer 1

The recipe calls for self-raising flour, which has a raising agent in it which causes the dough to rise in the oven. Risen bakes will be soft, so you'd be better off using plain flour. I'm surprised a recipe for this type of cookie would call for self-raising flour. Most recipes call for the butter and sugar to be creamed, that's simply beating the butter and sugar together until it's light and creamy. I'm not sure if you'd get the same result with xylitol, however you could still cream the butter to get it light and fluffy.

Answer 2

Xylitol is frequently called "sugar substitute", which is terribly misleading.

If you have something in which you use sugar as a sweetener (e.g. a cup of coffee), you can generally use an alternative sweetener instead. In this case, the substitution is adequate.

But in baking, sugar is not a sweetener. It makes the body of the product, and together with the other ingredients, it creates a very specific texture. Making the baked goods sweet is an incidental side effect.

As a result, you cannot just pick some random sweetener and use it in place of sugar in baking. Your texture is always going to be different. With cakes, it can happen that the result is within the range which you consider to be acceptable for cake, and be OK with the (now different) recipe. This is however a matter of chance. For other things, it is unlikely that the result matches your expectations.

You can try finding recipes for biscuits made with xylitol. If you find none, that's a good indication that xylitol isn't suitable for making biscuits, and stop experimenting. You can then try finding recipes which use other sweeteners, but your choice will be very limited, as artificial sweeteners will do you no good, they just can't provide any bulk. Powdered dextrose may be worth a try.

Creaming creates the air bubbles which are "blown up" during the rising of a cake. It isn't a good strategy for dense, snappy biscuits.

Bottom line, find a recipe and follow it without making any changes, especially if you don't have sufficient knowledge to look at it and recognize why it works.