I have
the tendency of basing my recipes & what I’m going to bake on the
ingredients I have to hand. Reminiscent of the challenge portion on the early
2000s show ‘Ready Steady Cook’ where the contestants had to cook a meal from a
bag of ingredients (anyone else remember that?), although if I’m honest I’d be
completely terrible at that and that’s mostly due to my inability to function
too well under pressure.
Anyway, today
a rummage through the freezer unearthed a bag of arils from a long finished
batch of pomegranates and I really wanted to use them. I’ve previously snacked
on them, put them in muesli, ice cream and they’re particularly yum in sweet
yellow rice; however this time around I wanted to add them to a bake. Enter the
humble oat biscuit, I’ve had this particular recipe in my repertoire for the
longest time, in fact it’s the very first recipe in my notebook – my mum’s
friend gave it to her years and years ago and I adopted it. Since the early
days I’ve made it a great deal of times and I love altering it a little bit
every now and then.
This time I added in the pomegranate arils along with some chopped up walnuts and almonds, the combination of crunch from the nuts and tangy bursts from the pomegranate compliment the soft oat cookies quite well.
In terms of the recipe I've always used cup measurements - it makes it really easy and you can increase or decrease the amount accordingly.
So to make these oat cookies you will need a few ingredients:
1. Margarine
2. Granulated sugar
3. Oats
4. Plain flour
5. Bicarbonate of Soda
6. Cinnamon
7. Honey
8. Pomegranate arils & chopped nuts
To begin with, combine 2 1/2 cups of regular oats, 1 1/2 cups of plain flour, a pinch of cinnamon and 1 cup of granulated sugar in a bowl - mix it all together and put the dry ingredients aside.
To prepare the raising agent, dissolve 1/2 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda or baking soda in 2 tablespoons of water (or milk).
Stir the soda water into melted margarine (1 cup) and to this add 3 tablespoons of honey - golden syrup is also an option but honey adds the right amount of stickiness and sweetness without being unhealthy; this concludes the required wet ingredients.
The final step is to add the liquid to the dry ingredients and mix well to combine, its good to press the ingredients together with your hands to form a dough (add a splash more water or margarine if required).
Then mix in your chopped nuts and pomegranate arils, mine were still quite frozen at this point but that's completely fine.
Make small sized biscuits and flatten in the palm of your hand - place then evenly spread apart on a lined baking tray.
Cook in a Gas Mark 7 oven for around 8-10 minutes, do not over bake if you want a soft chewy biscuit, as these cookies do have a tendency to harden upon cooling.
Enjoy with a hot drink at tea-time or as a quick but filling breakfast. Either way I hope you give this recipe a try, its highly adaptable i.e substitute the nuts for chocolate chunks or the pomegranate for dried cranberries?
😋
Enjoy!
Q x
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