Garibaldi Biscuits
Garibaldi Biscuits are golden biscuits filled with sweet currants sandwiched between two layers of soft buttery biscuit dough. Enjoy this classic biscuit with a cup of tea or coffee that you can also dip them into!
🍪 What Are Garibaldi Biscuits?
You may recognise their fun alternative names; fly’s graveyard, ant cemetery’s and squashed fly biscuits. Those don’t sound too appetising but I’m sure you know what biscuits I’m talking about.
So what exactly is a garibaldi biscuit? Well they’re pretty simple. Created with only 8-ingredients, these traditional biscuits have a homemade buttery biscuit dough which is lightly sweetened. It’s then scattered with currants, which you don’t have to soak in any liquids prior to adding them to your dough.
When you scatter your currants over one half of the biscuit dough and cover it with the other half piece of dough, this is what creates the appearance of squashed flies.
Whilst you’re rolling the dough back out, the currants squish between the two layers and peek trough the top layer, hence the quirky name references.
You then trim the edges and finally slice out your longer biscuit bars. Brush each with an egg wash and sprinkle over some extra sugar. Then bake! This is how easy garibaldi biscuits are to make at home.
If you’re interested in more iconic cookie and biscuit recipes, try these:
- Homemade Chocolate Wheatens.
- Bakery Style Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies.
- Lemon Cream Shortbread Biscuits.
- Iced VoVo Biscuit Recipe.
📋 Key Ingredients
Here are the ingredients that you need to make these easy Garibaldi Biscuits:
Plain all purpose flour as the foundation to your biscuit dough. Adds structure.
Baking powder provides lift during baking, which makes the biscuits light and slightly crumbly.
Caster sugar adds sweetness to the dough and texture/colour.
Unsalted butter as the moisture component. Makes the biscuits melt in your mouth.
Milk brings together the biscuit dough along with the butter. It’s also used in the egg wash.
Currants as the filling ingredient.
Egg used in the egg wash which you will brush over your biscuits just before you pop them in the oven.
🥣 How to Make Garibaldi Biscuits
How to make Garibaldi biscuits from scratch in 6 easy steps!
A full and detailed recipe card is at the bottom of this post.
Step one: The biscuit dough is created in your food processor, similar to shortcrust pastry. If you don’t have a food processor, you can easily do this process using your hands by rubbing the butter into the dry flour ingredients. This dough doesn’t require chilling either – woohoo!
Step two: Once you have created your dough, you’ll now pat it out into a rough thick rectangle on a lightly floured surface such as your kitchen bench or a large chopping board. Flour your rolling pin and let’s get rolling!
Step three: Sprinkle the currants over one half of the dough, then fold the other half of dough up and over the currants which then creates a smaller rectangle. Roll it back out to almost the original size rectangle which you started with. Trim the edges of the dough to create even sides.
Step four: Grab a fork and lightly prick the top of the dough all over. Now it’s time for you to cut your biscuits out using a knife and a measuring tape.
Step five: Whip up a simple 2-ingredient egg wash which is an egg + milk. Brush this over each biscuit then sprinkle each with the extra caster sugar.
Step six: Bake in your pre-heated oven for 20-22 minutes. Serve and enjoy!
💭 Tips For Recipe Success
- Ensure your butter is cubed and chilled when making the dough, this prevents the butter from getting too warm and melting through the flour, which results in soggy dough.
- To ensure all of your biscuits have a straight edge, be sure to trim the sides before cutting into biscuits. Take those trimmings and pop them on a separate baking tray and bake until golden, enjoy later.
- The egg wash is what give these biscuits that nice golden finish which you won’t achieve using just milk alone. Be sure to include the sprinkle of sugar as gives the biscuits a slight crunch.
⏲️ Storage Instructions
Store garibaldi biscuits in an airtight container, at room temperature, for 1 week.
If you enjoy this recipe, please consider leaving a ⭐️ star rating and a comment review below. I love to hear what you think and it’s much appreciated. Thank you! Your email address will not be published. Sam x
Garibaldi Biscuits
Ingredients
- 2 cups (300g) plain all purpose flour, scoop & leveled
- 1/3 cup golden or white caster sugar
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 130 g unsalted butter, cubed and chilled
- 6 Tbsp whole milk
- 1 1/2 cups currants
- 1 small egg
- 1/2 Tbsp whole milk
- 1-2 Tbsp golden or white caster sugar, to sprinkle on top
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 180ºC (350ºF). Line a large baking tray with baking paper and set aside.
- In a high-speed food processor, add flour, sugar and baking powder. Pulse a couple of times to blend together.
- Add chilled cubed butter. Pulse for 15 seconds until mixture resembles coarse crumb.
- Through the vertical shoot, drizzle a tablespoon at a time of the milk then pulse the mixture. Once all six tablespoons of milk have been added, keep pulsing mixture until it begins to stick together into a rough dough, not a solid ball of dough (refer to images above). If the dough is still too dry, add a little more milk until it comes/sticks together.
- Turn dough onto a lightly floured bench top or large board. Bring together to a ball of dough, you may need to knead it a little. Then flatten it out into a rough thick rectangle shape.
- Sprinkle flour under the dough again and on the rolling pin, enough flour as the dough can stick to the surface.
- Roll dough out to a large rectangle, 4mm in thickness and measuring 40cm in length and 30cm in width (15 inch x 11 inch).
- Sprinkle currants over one half of dough, I used the top half (refer to above images for step by step). Spread currants out to the edges.
- Fold other half of dough up and over the currants, matching up the edges evenly.
- Flour under dough and rolling pin. Roll dough out to a large rectangle again, measuring about 35cm in length and about 25cm in width (13 inch x 9 inch) and about 4mm in thickness.
- Trim edges using a long sharp knife. The finished rectangle should measure about 30cm in length and 20cm in width (11 inch x 7 inch).
- Take a fork and lightly prick the dough all over, the fork doesn’t have to go completely through the dough, just prick the surface.
- With that same knife, evenly slice the dough down the middle, lengthways, to create two rectangle pieces.
- Slice into long biscuits measuring about 10cm in length and 4cm in width (4 inch x 1.5 inch).
- Carefully pick up and transfer biscuits to lined baking tray. Leaving a small gab between each.
- In a small mixing bowl whisk together egg and milk.
- Using a pastry brush, brush each biscuit with a light layer of egg wash.
- Sprinkle each with some caster sugar.
- Bake for 10 minutes then rotate tray and bake for a further 10-12 minutes until light-medium golden all over.
- Remove from oven and allow to cool on tray for 5 minutes.
- Carefully transfer biscuits to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Serve and enjoy!
it is a VERY good recipe, thank you.
Hi Beti, thank you so much!! I appreciate your kind words. I’m happy to hear you loved these Garibaldi biscuits! Kindest, Sam x
can I use GF flour to make them?
Hi Linda, I haven’t personally tested this recipe with gluten-free flour, but I would recommend trying a baking gluten-free all-purpose flour blend. Use the same quantity as the recipe calls for regular flour. Keep in mind that results may vary slightly in texture and flavor due to the nature of gluten-free flour. If you do try it, I’d love to hear about your results! Kindest, Sam
i used dried cranberries and a bit less milk. the dough was easy to work with, i cut it up and moved to the baking tray using bench scraper. since i live in the tropics i put the cookies in the freezer for about an hour to firm up before baking. it is a good recipe, thank you.
Hi Dots! I’m so happy to hear your garibaldi biscuits were a success! I love that you used dried cranberries, what a wonderful and tasty alternative. Glad they worked with the added chilling time in the freezer, thanks for sharing your tip. Sam x
Made these with chopped dried cranberries and they were delicious (I didn’t have any currants!). Much better than the UK shop-bought ones! Even my hubby, who dislikes all currants/raisins/sultanas/cranberries tried one and said they were ‘dangerously tasty’!
Hi Clarissa! The addition of cranberries sounds amazing! So happy you made and enjoyed these Garibaldi’s and that your hubby loved them too! I’ll have to try the cranberries instead of the currants myself next time 🙂 Thanks for sharing! Sam x
Hi! Thank you for the recipe–I made it today. That was my first attempt at Garibaldi biscuits. Mine turned out nice, but they could’ve been better. I ran out of AP flour and used about 2/5 sprouted whole wheat flour; I only had plant-based milk on hand, and I think they would have been nicer but for those two things. I do think that if I made a sugar syrup and briefly cooked the currants, and then got most of the liquid out of them, that it would have made them nicer to bite into. I’ll try them again when I get some moo-milk and AP flour. Having said all that, they were scrummy with tea this afternoon! Thanks again 🙂
Add 1/2 tsp. of salt to the dough, and this is a perfect recipe. So yummy with a cup of tea.