All About Tea Biscuits

A tea biscuit is basically scone dough that is rolled out and cut with a round cookie cutter to make smaller portion sizes  — all of my recipes make about 13 or more servings and range from 130 to just under 200 calories each. I didn’t want to call these scones because I use a cookie cutter, about 3″ diameter and they are much thinner, about 1/2 inch thick, designed to be lower in calories but still somewhat filling.  
The psyllium husk and Flax seed add fiber to fill you up. I made these to be fillers in my diet without adding a huge amount of calories or the expense of buying “nutritional bars”. 
I have a ”basic recipe” mix that is the common dry ingredients that are used in all of the variations of my tea biscuit recipes. To save myself a lot of time, I take several mason jars and measure out the “basic recipe” into each of the mason jars, then they are ready to go without getting out all the individual ingredients again.  Whenever I need to make a batch I empty a mason jar of ingredients into my food processor and just add the ingredients for the recipe’s variation – really saves time.

I will have at least five variations added to this blog that I have made at least once and would make again and again. I will add more as I try out new ones — my daughter and I have come up with a number of ones to try. If they pass our taste test I’ll add them here.
These are great with a cup of tea or coffee or on the go. They don’t need to be refrigerated and they last a long time in an airtight container.   I’ve never tested their shelf life because they get eaten too fast – even making multiple batches they are gone in a couple of weeks. Biscotti can last up to six months, so I expect these should last at least half that, and the dryer they are the longer they will be good.
I haven’t messed up a batch yet, and I’ve tried several without measuring and have even left out the baking powder on several batches and I couldn’t tell the difference. Experiment and try new things!  Keep the basic ratios and major ingredients and you can’t go wrong.

So why are these called tea biscuits. I’ve made scones and biscotti for years and for my scones I typically cut them in the traditional wedges, making about 8 scones per recipe, which were still on the small side compared to the ones you get at a certain coffee store – these have close to 500 calories each, which is nearly one-third of the calories I should eat all day and hardly any fiber! So I started using the cookie cutter to make a uniform size and smaller portion. They are dryer in the center, more like biscotti, so they have a longer shelf life (in theory, no scientific study). My daughter first suggested I didn’t call them scones because it might confuse people who were used to the traditional thick wedges. She suggested the name Tea Cakes – which I started to use, but cakes are light and airy and these are not. Then is struck me. On one of the earlier batches I made, using peanut butter, I forgot to set the timer, so the batch was in the over for at least five extra minutes. Not long enough to burn them, but they were definitely on their way. The result was an extra dry and hard scone (which is what I was calling them at the time, since my recipes were derived from my favorite scone recipe). My daughter didn’t like them because they were really hard and over cooked. She teased me and suggested I give them to the dogs since they were close to being ruined, she suggested they were dry like dog biscuits. Which in fact they were. But even when they aren’t over cooked, the name “biscuit” is really is more fitting than “cake”  — so we have tea biscuits.