Digestive Biscuit Cake

Wotchers!

We end this short biscuit series with cake!

A cake made from biscuits!

This is an adaptation of a recipe I found online made with Graham crackers. I’ve never had a Graham cracker. However, many recipes online mention that Graham crackers can be substituted by digestive biscuits and I loooove digestive biscuits. Not really the chocolate ones – although I’m not saying I’d actually turn one down – but plain digestives, which sit perfectly on the cusp of sweet and savoury: amazing with cheese, divine when used as a spoon dipped into fruit yogurt (you’ve not tried it? You’re missing out. And now this nested, run-on sentence has reached such epic proportions I’m going to have to start a new paragraph!).

ANYHOO…

This recipe uses digestive biscuit crumbs as a substitute for most of the flour and the resulting cake is amazingly moist and tender, and also tastes of digestive biscuits.

Well it did once I’d tweaked it a little.

The original (which I tried as was out of respect….yadda yadda yadda) included vanilla extract, which seemed to overpower any trace of digestive biscuit. Then I tried it again, without the vanilla, and it was better, but still rather too nuanced for my tastes. So I decided to try and bring out more flavour by toasting the crumbs in a pan. The result was the best yet, but I’m still wondering whether baking in the oven might produce even more toasty, digestivy, goodness. However, on account of me getting sidetracked too easily (this was baked a month ago), if we wait until I’ve put this to the test, it’s going to be Easter, so I’ll keep you posted if/when I get back to it!

It’s lovely plain, but much enhanced by a sweetened, cream-cheese topping and a sprinkling of digestive crumbs for added texture.

Digestive Biscuit Cake

250g digestive biscuit crumbs¹
70g plain flour
2½tsp baking powder
115g butter – softened
150g caster sugar
2 large eggs
160ml milk

• Heat the oven to 180°C, 160°C Fan.
• Line a 20cm-ish square pan with parchment paper. Grease the parchment paper.
• Blitz around 300g of biscuits to find crumbs in a food processor.
• Tip them into a dry pan and stir over medium-low heat until toasted and aromatic. Depending on the size and heat of your pan, this might take a while. Set aside to cool.
• When cooled, measure out 250g of crumbs and stir them into the flour and the baking powder.
• Whisk together the sugar and the butter until light and fluffy.
• Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
• Add the flour mixture and the milk alternately, until fully combined. The mixture will appear very moist, but not liquid.
• Put the mixture in the prepared pan and smooth over.
• Bake for 25-ish minutes (depending on the size of your pan) until risen and browned. Judge doneness as you would a regular sponge cake.
• Allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before removing to cool completely on a wire rack.

Cream cheese topping

This is the simplest cream cheese topping. Other options you might like to try include this one or this one.
If you decide to fill AND top the cake, you might want to increase the recipe by 50%.

400g cream cheese
2-3tbs icing sugar
digestive biscuit crumbs

• Whisk the icing sugar into the cream cheese. The cake is sweet, and you want this to be a contrast, so this really doesn’t need much sweetening at all.
• Spread over the top of the cake and sprinkle the remainder of the biscuit crumbs as liked.

¹ A large (400g) packet of plain digestive biscuits will be enough for the cake itself, a crumbled topping and a few biscuits to enjoy while the cake it baking. I like McVities.