3 Best Ideas for Baking Intriguing UK-Style Vegan Biscuits

Do you crave biscuits? With the help of this collection of delectable vegan biscuit recipes, you no longer have to. Whether you’re looking for a traditional biscuit like digestive or something of a custard cream or even something more unique like Viennese whirls, there’s an option for everyone.

Do you envision fluffy, scone-like biscuits or crunchy cookies the moment you hear the term “biscuit”? For instance, in the UK, any sort of non-soft cookie is referred to as a biscuit. Any item with a satisfying “snap” qualifies as a biscuit. So, once you’ve filled your tummy with a tasty savory dish, possibly one of the prepared food or, even better, meal packages that are the focus of the top organic meal delivery services, it’s time for something sweet!

Some of us here devoted a lot of effort to hunting up biscuit recipes when we just went vegan. In the supermarkets, there were a few unintentionally vegan biscuits, but we always prefer to try making our own. But every time we looked for recipes, we invariably found ones for biscuits made in the US. They are absolutely not the same thing as biscuits in some other parts of the world, even if we’re sure they’re beautiful too!

We’ve put together this modest collection of the top vegan biscuit recipes people adore (or are about to) mostly in the UK (given it’s a nation with some of the craziest people for biscuits) to spare you from the same dilemma. Others of our own recipes are included, along with some from those other vegan bloggers.

Empire Biscuits

Empire biscuits, a traditional Scottish treat! Two strawberry jam-filled shortbread rounds were covered with frosting and a “jelly” treat.

They contain Scottish shortbread and are incredibly popular in local bakeries; we’ve never genuinely seen them elsewhere in the globe. Therefore, we’re going to announce that they are a Scottish treat. We apologize if we’re mistaken... Nevertheless, what’s important is that they are wonderful.

Allow us to describe empire biscuits if you’re unfamiliar. In essence, they consist of two pieces of shortbread spread with strawberry jam and coated in frosting. Although they usually have a glace cherry on top, the ones old folks used to buy had Jelly Tot-style candies instead (which, in case you didn’t know, are vegan-friendly). Additionally, we detest the flavor of glace cherries, and we believe the Jelly Tots’ color adds a wonderful finishing touch despite our dislike of their flavor.

Although the flatbread for the biscuits is often made with eggs, it’s rather simple to make it without them. By simply substituting a little more margarine for the egg in the recipe from an old cookbook from the 1960s we found, we modified it. It performed flawlessly! The shortbread is excellent and melts on your tongue, but it also has a nice crunch.

We entirely veganized this dish by using dairy-free margarine. Who couldn’t love this?

Preparation

• Mix 180g of vegan margarine and 100g of caster sugar in a medium bowl. Dairy margarine, which is soft and spreadable rather than dairy butter, which is blocky, is the better option if you’re not vegan and/or prefer not to use veggie margarine because it has the thinner consistency required for this recipe. It’s important to carefully mix the two constituents.
• 300g of plain (all-purpose) flour should then be added to the bowl. With a spoon, stir the mixture until it begins to clump together into little pieces. Now, mash the contents into a dough by using your hands. For half an hour, refrigerate the batter. This will assist it slightly in tightening up and stop the shortbread from falling apart when baking. Preheating your oven to 180°C/350°F as well as lining two sizable baking pans with parchment paper are also good ideas at this point. Turn your oven to 160°C/325°F if you’re using a fan or turbo oven.
• Take the dough out of the refrigerator. It ought to be just barely sticky at this point, but not moist. Your work surfaces or hands shouldn’t become stuck to them. You could need to add a bit of extra flour to make it manageable if it’s too sticky. Using a certain brand of vegan margarine will be important because some may be “wetter” than others.
• Roll out the dough to a thickness of ½ inch after lightly flouring your work area and rolling the pin. Use a 3-inch cookie cutter to cut out your biscuit shapes, and then reuse and reroll any extra dough until it is all gone. You should have about 24 shortbread cookies left over, which will yield 12 sandwiched empire cookies.
• The biscuits should bake for 18 to 20 minutes. They will remain mushy, but as they cool, they will harden up. Place them on a cooling rack and let them finish cooling.
• Pairs of biscuits sandwiched with strawberry jam. For each couple of biscuits, we used around half a tbsp of jam.
• Mix 200g of powdered sugar and 1 tbsp of cold water until the frosting is smooth. Use the back of a teaspoon to evenly distribute some atop each sandwiched biscuit.
• While the frosting is still wet, place a Jelly Tot or half of a glace cherry atop each empire biscuit.
• To give the icing time to set and somewhat thicken, let the biscuits rest for 30 minutes.

Custard Creams

Usually manufactured with dairy and/or eggs, custard cream biscuits can be made vegan by using homemade versions instead. Without or with the traditional custard cream stamp, you can manufacture them.

You probably already know everything about the delightful treat known as the custard cream cookie if you are a British citizen. You already know that they are created with dairy ingredients, too. The traditional British cookies are still our favorite. Treats like hobnobs, party rings, bourbon biscuits, and ginger nuts are virtually always unintentionally vegan. But WE SO MUCH MISS custard creams. Since we haven’t seen an unintentionally vegan custard cream in the stores, we created them ourselves.

Let us explain in case you have no clue what we’re talking about. Sandwich biscuits with a custard flavor and a crispy exterior are called custard cream biscuits. They also have a distinctive swirly pattern etched on them. Their basic composition of fat, flour, and sugar makes them extremely similar to shortbread. But in this instance, we substituted custard powder for some of the flour. To turn the biscuits slightly crunchier and to help the dough cling together, we also added a small amount of soy milk. The final modification we made was to fill them with vegan custard buttercream as opposed to vanilla.

Ingredients:

• You’ll need vegan margarine. Since this is the vegan “butter” we prepared the recipe with, we suggest using it. Otherwise, your biscuit batter will be too crumbly.
• Vanilla essence. In addition to the custard powder, this contributes a little extra flavor.
• Sugar caster. Just enough to add a hint of sweetness without becoming excessive.
• Plain flour, is likewise called all-purpose flour.
• Powdered custard. The primary flavor of this dish!
• Plant-based milk to aid in the dough’s formation. Except perhaps for coconut, you can use whatever other plant-based milk you prefer.
• Frosting sugar in order to prepare the vanilla custard buttercream filling.

Powdered vegan custard

Custard powder is one of the primary components in this recipe. Of course, this contributes to the biscuits’ well-known flavor. Many custard powders contain milk and/or eggs, as you are surely aware. But unintentionally vegan Bird’s custard powder doesn’t! We used this one in our recipe. It’s delicious, reasonably priced, and accessible on Amazon if you reside outside of the UK.

Exactly How to Emboss the Biscuits?

Used a cutter to create the iconic swirly pattern and lettering on the biscuits. You may bake your own bourbon biscuits, Jammie Dodgers, and party rings at home using the additional three biscuit cutters which we assume you already bought.

It’s okay if you decide not to buy the biscuit cutter! Vegan custard creams are still possible to prepare. To cut out the rectangle shapes, all you’ll need is a ruler or tape measure; this will guarantee that the baking time will be identical to if you were to use the stamp.

Of course, using a toothpick to create swirls on the biscuits will be pretty difficult, but you could roll out the dough with an embossed rolling pin to achieve a similar result. For a more beautiful appearance, you may also use a toothpick to draw small dots around the biscuits’ edges.

Preparation

• First, preheat your oven to 180°C (or 160°C for fan ovens) and prepare a sizable baking sheet with parchment paper. If you’d prefer, you may also opt for a non-stick cookie tray.
• Combine 100g of caster sugar and 170g of vegan margarine in a big bowl. Add 2 tbsp of vanilla extract after that.
• Pour 100g of custard powder, 300g of plain flour, and 2 tbsp of soy milk into a bowl. When it begins to stick, mix it in with a spoon and then flatten it into a dough ball with your hands.
• The dough ball should be covered and chilled in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. This will ensure that the pattern is apparent following you press it on and that the biscuits maintain their shape while baking.
• After chilling, briefly rewarm the dough in your hands before rolling it out to a thickness of ½ cm. The biscuits can be cut out using your custard cream imprint or knife. They ought to be 2 x 1.5 inches in diameter if you plan to cut them with a knife. To ensure that the baking time is consistent, we advise measuring them using a tape measure.
• Roll the remaining portions again till the dough is all consumed. There should be about 48 overall in the end. After cutting the shapes, refrigerate them for an additional 30 minutes.
• Bake the cookies for about 25 minutes after placing them on the baking sheet. When they feel solid under your fingertips all over, they are prepared.
• Before removing them from the tray, let them cool fully.

Vanilla custard filling with buttercream

The “cream” component of custard creams is this vegan custard buttercream filling. It is a straightforward, dairy-free buttercream with a dash of custard powder.

To create it, first, combine in a medium bowl 80g vegan margarine and ½ tsp vanilla extract.

Measure out 2 tsp of custard powder and 230g of icing sugar. A little at a time, blend it with the margarine until smooth. To loosen it, stir with 2 tsp of soy milk.

On half of the cooled biscuits, pipe or distribute a tiny amount of the custard buttercream. In order to prevent the filling from oozing out of the sides, use the remaining half to join them in pairs; 24 sandwiched biscuits should be the result.

Viennese Whirls

In the UK, Viennese whirls are a popular biscuit! In case you didn’t know, these are prepared with piping shortbread biscuits, strawberry jam, and dairy-free buttercream filling. Among our favorite vegan cookies are these! It’s a sandwich biscuit. They can be found in a few different varieties, including Viennese shortbread, which is essentially simply plain cookies on its own, and Viennese fingers, which are frequently wrapped in chocolate (without the need for a filling). Many people believe these biscuits came from Vienna, Austria due to the name, however, Google says it's more probable that they came from England! How strange.

Before some of us became vegans, we used to adore Mr. Kipling’s Viennese whirls because they melted in our mouths. However, they are obviously off-limits if you don’t consume dairy because they are cooked with butter. These whirls were the next item on our list as we worked through our old favorite cookies and biscuits to create a vegan-friendly alternative.

Instead of the solid dough you receive, while making traditional shortbread, Viennese whirl dough has the consistency of a paste. We used Tesco’s technique as a reference point because we had never cooked it in this manner previously. It took us fairly a few tries because we had to continuously change the ingredient ratios because we were substituting dairy-free margarine for butter.

Since our first several batches only tasted like cornflour, we eliminated it and added more plain flour in its place. The second set of dough was so dense that it shattered our piped bag (too much flour), and the following two batches entirely lost their contour in the oven (far too much fat).

When we had perfected the recipe, we discovered that it was quite similar to Mary Berry's recipe. We didn't use cornflour, we included vanilla extract in our biscuit dough, we used a little less margarine, and we used store-bought strawberry jam rather than homemade raspberry jam as the only variations between our recipe and Mary Berry’s.

Additionally, we baked them at a cooler temperature for a little longer. The biscuits weren't baking through to the middle at the increased temperature because the margarine retained more water.

Ingredients:

• Margarine is devoid of dairy. Use the spreadable, tub-style Viennese whirls rather than the block-style if you’re trying to avoid dairy. Margarine has a higher water content than butter, which keeps the dough in a pipeable texture so it won’t collapse in the oven.
• Frosting sugar.
• Vanilla essence.
• All-purpose flour. Most recipes ask for a combination of normal flour and cornflour, often known as cornstarch, but we personally thought the flavor of this dish was too overpowering. We'd suggest substituting about 2 tbsp of the flour with corn flour if you wish to include it, which will leave the shortbread a little crumblier.
• Raspberry or strawberry jam. You have the option of using store-bought jam or homemade jam.
• Baking sheet. We advise using a sizable baking sheet-lined tray. They’ll bake more quickly if you use non-stick baking paper, so you’ll need to remove them from the oven just a little bit earlier.
• A piping bag. You’ll need to pipe this cookie dough under a lot of pressure in order for it to be thick enough just to keep its shape when baking. To avoid the bag breaking while you pipe, we suggest using a pastry piping bag if at all possible.
• Star-shaped piping nozzles. You need it to pipe the buttercream and biscuits.

Preparation

• Set your oven to 180°C (or 160°C if it has a fan), and then turn it on. Utilize the baking paper to line a sizable tray.
• 50g of icing sugar, 240g of vegan margarine, and a half teaspoon of vanilla essence should be thoroughly combined in a big bowl.
• After that, stir in 250g of flour in the bowl. The final product ought to resemble a thick paste. Fill a pastry bag with the ingredients and attach a large star nozzle.
• Onto the baking sheet, pipe swirls that are 2 inches wide, ensuring that there are a few centimeters between each one. Expect to obtain between 24 and 28 spirals. Make 2-inch circles on the opposite side of the baking sheet and use them as a reference if you’d like to make sure they’re all the same size.
• The biscuits should bake for about 25 minutes or until just golden brown. Transfer them to a wire rack to finish cooling after 5 minutes.

For the vegan buttercream

• 80g of vegan margarine should be added to a medium bowl; 200g of icing sugar should be measured out and added to the margarine in small amounts until thoroughly combined.
• Add 1 tsp of vanilla essence and stir.
• For about a minute, whip the buttercream with a hand blender until it is light and fluffy. Add additional icing sugar if you want to stiffen it, and some plant-based milk if you want to soften it.
• Buttercream should be transferred to a piping bag with a medium open-star nozzle.

Putting all together

• In a small bowl, combine about 4 tbsp of jam and stir well to soften it. As a result, when you spread it on, the biscuits won’t break.
• Put the biscuits in pairs. On one’s flat side, spread some jam, and on the other’s flat side, pipe a tiny buttercream swirl. Avoid squashing the buttercream as you sandwich them together.
• Add some icing sugar on top.

Tips

• For optimal results, use vegan margarine (the kind that sits in a tube, not the blocky kind).
• You can replace one or two tablespoons of flour with cornflour to make the biscuits crumblier (cornstarch). Because the flavor is rather powerful, don’t add too much.
• Because the dough is thick, you must pipe it with a lot of force. To prevent breakage, use a sturdy pastry bag or piping bag.
• If you use non-stick baking paper, you will need to remove them from the oven a little bit earlier. I advise making these on a lined tray.
• The buttercream will pour out as you chew into the biscuits if you overfill them. Leave a thin space all the way around.

We sincerely hope you enjoy making these vegan biscuits! If you attempt to create any of these at home, kindly share your experience in the comments section below. Have fun baking!