A while ago I wrote up my attempt at making a copy of Fox’s butter crinkle crunch biscuits, which are no longer available to buy. In that article I mentioned various things I thought I’d try, and others commented with some suggestions, so I thought I’d revisit the recipe.
Update 2023-03-14: there is a revised version of this recipe.
Since then I have obtained some “Uncle Roy’s” butter flavouring (triacetin). I found that the recommended 5–6 drops did nothing, but I got a reasonable amount of butteriness with about 60 drops (about 1.5 tsp)! Unfortunately the carrier solvent for this flavouring (Monopropylene Glycol) tastes quite harsh and bitter, and a hint of it remained in the end product. Uncle Roy’s offers a “super strength” version of this flavouring that might reduce this effect.
The other suggestions were to reduce the amount of sugar, add more oats, and to add milk powder. There was also a suggestion to use ammonium bicarbonate as the raising agent, but I couldn’t find that.
Unfortunately, putting all these together didn’t work very well. The dough ended up quite dry, though sticky enough to hold together. I think this prevented the raising agent from working properly, as they remained stubbornly flat while cooking, so I think adding some liquid (perhaps a bit of water or milk) or increasing the butter a bit, would help give the baking powder somewhere to react. This drying might have been an effect of adding the milk powder and increasing oats.
While I say “unfortunately”, they are still quite nice (I mean, just look at the ingredients!). I think next time I’ll lower the temperature and cook them a bit longer to give more chance for the solvents to boil off, and the raising agent to do its thing, aiming for a more consistent crunchy texture.
Just for reference (as I don’t recommend following this exactly!), here is a revised ingredients list; the instructions remain unchanged from before:
- 175g white flour
- 50g white sugar
- 25g dark muscovado sugar (adds a slightly caramel-y taste)
- 60g oats (porridge, not jumbo)
- 50g milk powder
- 125g butter
- 50g golden syrup
- 2tsp baking powder
- Pinch of salt
- 1.5tsp of butter flavouring
- 1/4tsp vanilla powder
- A small bowl of Demerara sugar (cassonade in France) for rolling
If you have a go at these, please leave a comment, as I’d love to know if you manage to do any better!
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