Is there such a thing as a truly healthy biscuit?

If there is I don’t know about it. The problem lies in the makeup of the biscuit. Wheat flour: refined, and high in carbohydrate and gluten is the backbone, with sugar and fat in various quantities cooked at high heat to produce an essentially water free and crunchy product. It might surround a sugar or chocolate paste or be coated in the same or contain dried fruit .

To be healthy or rather healthier it should be of flour that is gluten free, high in fibre, barely sweet and cooked slowly so its oil or fat content is left as a residual but also so it is not burned and producing acrylamides at the surface.

As regards sweetening I would like to see the concept of ‘barely sweet’ become commonplace - a sweetness that declares itself as such but only just.

Such a sweetness can be achieved in cooking if one soaks dried fruit in as much water by volume and uses both in the making of the biscuits. This is not good sweetness in the health sense but the fruit ( I like to use sultanas and some shops sell them ungraded in size very cheaplyl ) itself is less sweet from being soaked - say for 24-48 hrs and that soaking water has been correspondingly sweetened.

The fruit, dried somewhat from the slow cooking, also offers a pleasant chewiness so use lots of it.

As regards fat I would be inclined to use butter but only if the cooking temperature is lowish and the duration long. This should produce a texture and colour somewhat like a pale shortbread. If one wants to bake quickly I would use rice bran oil as this has a high smoke point and will not be too damaged by the extra heat.

Being high in fibre, let’s say 15-20%, it will be less likely when in the mouth to become gooey and adhere to the teeth - biscuits incidentally are one of the worst foods ever to destroy teeth - due to this clinginess I have mentioned.

One of the pleasures of eating a biscuit with tea or coffee is to dunk it and not have it fall off. The shortbread texture should allow rapid ingress of the liquid but the fibre, fat and the lesser carbohydrate should offer resistance to the dunked section falling off.

As for shelf life this should be good as the fat content acts as a not too toxic preservative.

As for amounts just experiment - you will not go to jail if it goes wrong and you will always be able to eat the result whatever happens - but importantly always note down the amounts you use and oven time etc so you know where you are next time.