Basic Biscuit Dough + add-ins

Basic Biscuit Dough is a great recipe to have in your repertoire. From this base, you can flavour the dough with all sorts of add-ins to make a range of tempting biscuits. In this post I share with you my basic dough for crisp, buttery biscuits and, to start you off, give some of my favourite flavour combinations.

Who doesn’t love a biscuit?

Crispy and crunchy, they’re a real treat.

Yes, shop-bought biscuits can be incredibly cheap. But, like most baked goods, I think they’re really much better made at home. Coming out of your own kitchen, you can also be sure they won’t contain any dodgy ultra processed ingredients or palm oil.

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Basic Biscuit Dough

If you’ve never made biscuits before, then the great news is that they’re incredibly easy.

Even better, you really only need to master my Basic Biscuit Dough recipe and you’ll have dozens of different varieties of homemade biscuit at your fingertips.

All you do to make the basic dough is rub butter (not margarine, please) into self-raising flour that has been sifted with a pinch of salt.

Then you stir in sugar before adding enough beaten egg to make a stiff dough. And that’s it. Your Basic Biscuit Dough is made.

To make the dough easier to roll and cut out biscuit shapes, you’ll need to chill the dough in the fridge for around 30 minutes.

Working with half of the dough at a time, keeping the rest chilled, you just roll it out thinly then cut out whatever shape and size biscuits you like. As a rough guide, the recipe will make approximately 40 biscuits using a 6-7 cm round cutter.

The biscuits won’t take much more than 10 minutes in the oven, so watch they don’t burn. Cool on a wire rack before storing in an airtight container.

Flavouring the Dough

The basic recipe will give you crispy biscuits that taste wonderfully sweet and buttery.

But, most often, you’re going to want to introduce a bit more interest to the biscuit. This is where you can have fun adding nuts, seeds, dried fruits, chocolate, spices, citrus zest or whatever else you fancy.

To incorporate your chosen add-ins, just follow the instructions for Basic Biscuit Dough and stir them in at the same time as the sugar.

You’ll need approximately 50 grams of bulky ingredients like nuts and dried fruits. For spices, zests, vanilla extract etc. add as much or as little as you fancy.

 To get you started, here’s a few suggestions:

• glace cherries and orange zest
• pecans & cinnamon
• desiccated coconut
• dark chocolate pieces & hazelnut
• white chocolate pieces & dried cranberries
• chai spices & sultanas
• lemon zest & poppy seeds
• date & walnut
• ground & crystalized ginger

Optional sugary topping

For some biscuits, I like to add a shiny, sugary topping. I particuarly like it on currant biscuits cut with a fluted cutter. These feel very retro to me as we used to have them when I was a kid – although those would’ve been shop bought.

To make the topping, whisk an egg white and brush it over the cut-out biscuits. Sprinkle a little sugar on the top then bake as usual.

Buttercream Layered Chocolate Biscuits

To make a really special biscuity treat, take three of the baked and cooled biscuits and layer them together with buttercream. Melt some white, milk or dark chocolate then dip the whole lot in to completely cover. Leave to set on greaseproof paper.

For the ones above, I added desiccated coconut to the Basic Biscuit Dough, cut it into rectangles instead of rounds and covered the layered biscuits in 70% dark chocolate. So good!

I think lemon and poppyseed biscuits would be sensational covered in white chocolate.

What add-ins and flavours do you like to put in your Basic Biscuit Dough?

4.5 from 2 votes

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Basic Biscuit Dough + add ins

Basic Biscuit Dough is a great base for a whole range of biscuits with your chosen add-ins. Here I share the basic recipe and give some flavour suggestions to start you off.

Course Snack, Biscuit

Cuisine World

Keyword baking

Prep Time 30 minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes

Chilling the dough 30 minutes

Servings 40 biscuits (if using 6-7 cm cutter)

Author Moorlands Eater

Ingredients

• 225 g self raising flour
• 1 pinch salt
• 150 g butter
• 100 g caster sugar
• 1 egg beaten

Optional Add-Ins (choose 1 or a mixture which add up to 50g)

• 50 g currants, sultanas or raisins chopped if large
• 50 g glace cherries chopped
• 50 g desiccated coconut
• 50 g nuts e.g. walnuts, hazelnuts, pecans finely chopped
• 50 g ground almonds
• 50 g seeds e.g. sesame, poppy, chia
• 50 g chocolate finely chopped

Optional flavourings (as many as you like)

• 3 tsp lemon, orange or lime zest finely grated
• 2-3 tsp spices e.g. cinnamon, ginger, mixed spice
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp almond extract

Sugar topping (optional)

• 1 egg white beaten
• caster sugar

Instructions

1. Sift the flour and salt into a bowl.

2. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles very fine breadcrumbs.

3. Stir in the sugar.

   Note: if using any of the optional add-ins and flavourings, add them with the sugar now.

4. Add just enough of the beaten egg to make a stiff dough: you may only need to use around half of the egg.

5. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and lightly knead until it's smooth.

   Wrap in cling film or foil and put in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

   In the meantime, preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan/Gas 4.

6. Butter some baking trays or line them with baking parchment: the mixture makes approximately 40 biscuits so you may need to cook them in batches.

7. Divide the dough in half, rewrap one half and put it back in the fridge.

8. Flour your worksurface and rolling pin, then roll out the remaining half of dough thinly.

   Stamp out biscuits using a 6-7 cm cutter and put them on the baking trays.

   Prick the biscuits all over with a fork.

   Optional Sugar Topping

   Once you've pricked the biscuits, brush lightly with beaten egg then sprinkle with sugar before proceeding with the next step.

9. Put the trays towards the middle of the oven & cook until cooked (approx 12 min). Watch them carefully as they can quickly burn.

10. Leave the trays to cool for a few minutes then carefully transfer the biscuits to a wire rack.

    When completely cold, store the biscuits in an airtight container.

11. Repeat with the rest of the biscuit dough.

Recipe Notes

Buttercream Layered Chocolate Biscuits

To make a really special biscuity treat, take three of the baked and cooled biscuits and layer them together with buttercream. Melt some white, milk or dark chocolate then dip the whole lot in to completely cover. Leave to set on greaseproof paper.

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