Garibaldi biscuits are crunchy buttery cookies, neither too rich nor too sweet, filled with soft currant raisins sandwiched inside. Every bite of these cookies has the taste of childhood.
The memory of these Garibaldi biscuits was rekindled by some raisin cookies that I was baking on the fly, some time last week after dinner. I was quite fond of these currant cookies as a child.
I seem to love baking cookies after dinner for some reason and I never quite follow any recipe or even less write it down when I’m baking at this time of the day. I let go to serendipity and it’s kind of like — a little bit of this, a little of that, I ‘feel’ the dough and know it’s okay.
So, a batch of some raisin cookies ended up with a texture that reminded me of the Garibaldi biscuits. I quickly jotted down an approximation of the measurements of ingredients, lest the recipe be lost forever into the ether!
Very often, my best recipes are those spontaneous ones that I don’t take notes about. These tend to most often happen with baked stuffs like cakes and cookies.
And when this happens, Kevin often goes like “I know this is the one and only time I’ll get to savour this delicious exquisite cake because I know there isn’t going to be another one like this one ever again. So, I will take my time and really really appreciate every morsel of it because I know you didn’t keep the recipe and I will never know of this sublime taste again for the rest of my life. This is the best cake you’ve ever made and…” lol!
He will go on and almost cry, sobbing about the sad state of things of a lost unwritten recipe which happened to be the most perfect cake that he’s ever tasted. This mostly happens with cakes. It’s pretty hilarious and I’m not making this up!
I confess that I’ve lost many good creations in this way. So, maybe he’s got a point and I understand his pain. I don’t quite consider it a loss though as I thoroughly enjoy the process when I’m baking these kinds of treats on the loose.
What are Garibaldi Biscuits?
Back to the Garibaldi biscuits though. If you aren’t familiar with them, these biscuits originate from the UK and (according to Wikipedia, since I didn’t know that part of the history) was invented by Jonathan Carr who named them after Giuseppe Garibaldi.
Garibaldi was an Italian army general known mainly for his contribution to the Italian unification and had visited the UK in 1854. He was so popular at the time that these biscuits were created and named after him and the name has stayed to this day.
Regardless of the Italian name, these currant cookies are traditionally British and I remember them being available in Mauritius during the days of my childhood. Infact, I’ve come to know recently that a version of the Garibaldi biscuits used to exist in the US as the ‘Sunshine’ Golden Fruit Cookies. I’ve never had the US version and I’m guessing there may be just a slight difference between the two.
If any of you out there have had the chance to taste both, then leave us a comment and let us know if there’s any difference between the UK version and the US one. I’d love to know.
They made great afternoon tea time snacks or any time snacks. These cookies aren’t too sweet and the currant raisins bring in some natural sweetness that lessen the need for a lot of additional sugar. They are crumbly and slightly dry and there’s no better way to serve them than with an aromatic cup of cardamom spiced tea!
A distinct feature of the Garibaldi biscuits is that they come in long slabs that are lightly scored to define each cookie. If you’ve ever had these biscuits before, I’m sure you’ll agree that much of the satisfaction comes from gently pulling each biscuit away. To get that same effect and so that the homemade cookies remain attached, it’s imperative to only score the dough before baking and not cut through it.
Apart from currant raisins, you can use other types of raisins like sultanas, golden raisins or other dried fruits. If using sultanas or other fruits that are larger than a currant, I suggest to finely chop them first.
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Watch the video for the easy step by step process.
Garibaldi Biscuits Recipe - Currant Raisin Cookies
Garibaldi biscuits are crunchy buttery raisin cookies, neither too rich nor too sweet, filled with soft currant raisins. Every bite tastes like childhood.
Ingredients
I recommend using the metric measurement (weight) rather than volume (cups).
- 130 g pastry flour, or cake flour [1 cup]
- ¾ teaspoon baking powder
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
- 45 g granular golden sugar , [¼ cup]
- 50 g margarine (vegan butter / non-hydrogenated vegan buttery spread), cold, [¼ cup]
- 30 ml non-dairy milk, like soy milk or almond milk [2 tablespoons]
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 60 g currants , [½ cup] or finely chopped sultanas, golden raisins or other dried fruits
Glazing:
- 1 tablespoon soy milk, or other non-dairy milk
- 1 tablespoon maple syrup, (or 1 teaspoon sugar)
Instructions
- In a large mixing bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar.
- Add the margarine. Cut and fold the margarine with a butter knife into the flour. Then rub the margarine into the flour with your fingertips until the mixture resembles a course sand.
- Now add the non-dairy milk and the vanilla extract. Mix with your hand into a dough. The dough should be slightly crumbly, dry and non-sticky.
- If the dough doesn’t hold together, add just a little more milk (a teaspoon or two) but not too much.
- Place the dough in a container and refrigerate for 30 minutes or freeze for about 10 minutes. This will make it easier to roll out and you’ll also get a nicer texture.
- Meanwhile preheat the oven at 180 C or 350 F.
- Remove the dough from the refrigerator and place it on a large piece of parchment paper, lightly floured.
- Using a floured rolling pin, roll out the dough to about 5 mm (¼ inch) thick and keep it as much as possible into a rectangular shape.
- Sprinkle the currants over half of the surface of the rolled dough. Spread out evenly.
- Carefully fold the other half of dough over to sandwich the raisins. Roll onto the parchment paper and gently press onto the currants while spreading and thinning out the dough a little more.
- Transfer the dough together with the sheet of parchment paper onto a baking tray.
- Using a long sharp knife, score the dough into strips of 4 cm X 7 cm (1½ inch x 2¾ inch). Only score the knife less than halfway through the dough so that after they are baked, they will still be connected and you can break the biscuits apart.
- For the glazing, mix the non-dairy milk and the maple syrup or sugar together, then brush on the dough.
- Bake for 15 minutes until the cookies are golden brown. Check after 10 minutes and keep an eye on them to make sure they are not burning.
- If the top isn’t golden enough, you may broil the cookies for the last 3 minutes of the baking. But if you do this, I suggest you stand there watching as they can burn pretty quickly while broiling.
- After 15 minutes, remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to cool. They will be soft when hot and will become crunchy upon cooling.
Notes
The cookies will last for more than a week and even two weeks if kept well in an airtight container. If they become soft after a few days, just reheat them in the oven for about 3 minutes and they will get their crunchiness back.
Link to original recipe - Garibaldi Biscuits Recipe - https://veganlovlie.com/garibaldi-biscuits-recipe
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I adored the Sunshine biscuits, but they have disappeared from all the grocery stores. Also, they had a shiny dark glaze on them and the filling was more of a very dry “jam” filling and the currants were not obvious, being ground up. So, I will try these. Also, it seems to be that the pastry might well have had arrowroot or cornstarch in it. I also will never use margarine in anything that I cook, so hopefully, it will be good. I’m glad to see these cookies again. Thanks
Thank you for your comment Stevie. It’s interesting to learn about the difference between the Sunshine cookies and the Garibaldi ones. The margarine that I use is actually a vegan buttery spread with no hydrogenated oils. It’s not those nasty ones. Anyway, hope you’ll have fun making these cookies. 🙂
These garibaldi sunshine biscuits were awesome—the recipe turned out great even tho I sorta spilled the orange juice. I have used plant butters( non hydrogenated) for about a year now & they work great. I was a butter-aholic before until I learned that my body couldn’t tolerate animal fats anymore when I became diabetic! I added orange ginger spice to my golden raisins & a touch of orange juice. Delicious—I don’t have to be without these wonderful cookies again!
Thank you for the recipe!!
This brings back a memory from my childhood in post-war Britain! When we could get biscuits (cookies) these ones were nick-named squashed fly biscuits! Didn’t stop us munching away on them though :).
Haha I’ve heard the term squashed flies too. Well, thank goodness they’re not actual flies. 😀
This looks amazing. Can i use coconut oil for this recipe.
You can try. Texture will be a little different I would think.
My Mom called them fly biscuits and these were my sons favourites.I am from Canada and tried to find a recipe very hard to do the one I found was a disappointment.Anyhow my son is very anxious for me to make them.Thank for putting up this recipe
Thank you so much. These cookies brought back memories. Also gave me answers as to how to use my Gluten free flour.
Wonderful.
I will be baking cookies today.
Here in the Netherlands we have the ‘sultana’ biscuits – very delicious. I made your recipe last week and thought they were very delicious. Of course they taste different than the biscuits sold here in the shops and they also looked a bit different than yours, but that might be because I used the margarine that is sold here (it is quite soft) and I used coconut sugar.
It was a delight to make these kind of biscuits at home – thank you very much!
Can you use gluten free flour?
I haven’t tried it myself so as to provide any feedback but might be worth trying.
I had the opportunity to have both the Sunshine (American) version and the Garibaldis as a child-both were good, but a bit dry. Made to be accompanied by tea! Can’t find them anymore! Looking forward to trying your recipe. I use the nice vegan buttery spread from Whole Foods in stick form-perfect substitute for butter. Thanks so much for this vegan recipe!
The Sunshine biscuits had slightly softer (moister) pastry than (say) Crawford’s Garibaldis. The bigger difference was that they used (grape) raisins rather than currants for the filling. The delightful blog A Nice Cup of Tea and a Sitdown, which specializes in cookie/biscuit history, informs us that they were initially made by the Sunshine Baking Company. It was bought by Keebler’s, which added some other fruits to the line. When Kellogg’s bought Keebler, the whole product line was dropped. Sigh. We have been satisfying our craving by getting Crawford’s on the Internet, Your recipe may solve the whole problem. Thank you!
Hi, these biscuit were so easy to make and a hit with my 5 year old daughter and my husband. After watching your video my daughter asked for some soy milk to dip her biscuit in and eat. I used plain flour and instead of sugar I used date paste, didn’t need to add the soy milk to mix the biscuit dough.
As with spontaneous baking, same things happen to me, I just add this and that, depending on what I have in pantry and fruits that need to be eaten, there’s no measuring of ingredients. And when husband eats them, he knows he won’t get them again! Sometimes when I’ve offered cakes to friends and they asked me for recipes, I can’t exactly tell them they think I don’t want to share my recipe!
Anyway, thanks for the recipe and all the best to you guys!
I had tried the sunshine golden biscuit cookies as a child. I had loved them. They were a special treat. And then they were gone. As an adult I traveled to London as my son now lives there. And I was “ very American” in the store when I saw an English version of the same cookie I couldn’t wait to take them back to his flat and try them with tea. And I was not disappointed. They were very close to those that I had been raised with. If I had to pin point what I remember as being different it would be that maybe the American version had slightly more fruit. But everything felt the same to eat them. I was really young when I had the American brand. Now whenever I visit I grab some and bring them home. Thanks for the recipe. I am going to try this and I can’t wait to try them.
Can’t wait to try making my own.. My mum was from Scotland. Living in the US she bought the Sunshine Golden cookies throughout my childhood, and I rather became fixated on them, sooooo good. Frustrated when they were no longer carried in markets…however, I was delighted to discover the Garibaldi biscuits on Bermuda, on several trips there….and have become rather an addict since, buying them through World Market in the US as well as from Amazon. Love the texture and the filling which does seem a drier filling than the Sunshine Golden Biscuits…but…reminiscent of my childhood and wonderful. I just received a 12 pack of these in my mail today!
This cookie was my mother’s and my favorite back in the fifties. Then they disappeared. I was thrilled to find a box several years ago to surprise her. Now I’m re thrilled to find a recipe! I made them with my granddaughter, carrying on the tradition of eating raisin cookies. Thank you!