Biscuits (cookies) turning out more cake-like than biscuity Yesterday, for the first time ever, I tried baking some biscuits. I found a suitable recipe for some malted milk biscuits (I love malt), and followed it almost exactly; I endeavour to make everything sugar-free (and when I say 'sugar', I mean fructose), so I substituted the sugar with Xylitol. This is the recipe and method I followed:


125g butter
2.5 cups self-raising flour
1/2 cup xylitol
1 tsp salt
1 egg
3 heaped tbsp malt extract


I mixed the butter (room temp.) &amp; xylitol; then added the egg; then added the flour 1 cup at a time, followed by the salt; then the malt, 1 tbsp at a time. I then chilled it for half an hour, cut into shapes, chilled for another 15 minutes (it was pretty warm), and then put in the oven at 160c (fan) for 15 minutes.

They came out fine, but they had definitely risen (they were rolled out to about 0.5cm and rose in the middle to about 1.5cm) and the texture was more like a stiff cake than a snappy biscuit (they should be more like a stiff, crumbly ginger-snap texture).

I suspected it might have been the self-raising flour, so I did a second batch with plain flour, and although they didn't rise, they still came out just as cake-like. 

I've read (at least) three different things that apparently affect the texture of a biscuit:


The temperature is usually hotter and baked faster (180c for 10 minutes, for example);
Adding more sugar (although, since xylitol has a 'cooling' mouthfeel (as well as other effects...) I don't want to simply dump more in);
The creaming method.


I've seen the creaming method mentioned a few times, but never with any specifics or directions, and unfortunately, as a biscuit-baking n00b, I don't know how to fix this issue. 

tl;dr my biscuits aren't snappy - how do I fix?
The recipe calls for self-raising flour, which has a raising agent in it which causes the dough to rise in the oven. Risen bakes will be soft, so you'd be better off using plain flour. I'm surprised a recipe for this type of cookie would call for self-raising flour. Most recipes call for the butter and sugar to be creamed, that's simply beating the butter and sugar together until it's light and creamy. I'm not sure if you'd get the same result with xylitol, however you could still cream the butter to get it light and fluffy.