Scottish Oatcakes

Savory oatcakes (or bannocks) are quintessentially Scottish.
Perfect with some hearty cheese, smoked salmon, goats cheese & dill or chutney.

Ingredients

225g Scottish oatmeal

60g wholewheat flour

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

60g butter or olive oil

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp sugar

60-80ml hot water

 

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 190C.

Mix everythign together in a bowl except the water.

It should have the consistency of large bread crumbs.

Start adding the water until you have a thick dough.

The amount of water varies; depending on the oats.

 

Sprinkle some flour on a bench and roll out the dough to1/2cm thickness.

Use an upturned whisky glass to cut rounds.

Bake for appprox. 20-30mins. or until slightly golden brown.

 

I think these are nice with bananas or with honey, or almond butter :)

Gingerbread Cookies

Beth gave me some really great cooking utensils and some Lindt Chocolate as well as Gary Mehigans 'Comfort Food' cookbook. Its got some great recipes in it, including "Green eggs and ham" - poached eggs on toast with hollandaise sauce with peas in it - Yum!

So I decided to use some chocolate for a cookies recipe, but I had planned to make gingerbread men and only had the ingredients for those. Though, I know someone who loves any of my cookies as long as they have chocolate in them so I decided to experiment.

Ingredients:

2 cups white whole wheat flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup crystallised ginger, loosely packed

½ teaspoon ground cloves

½ teaspoon ground cardamom pods

½ teaspoon ground star anise

½ tablespoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon finely ground black pepper

5 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature

1/3 cup dark natural cane sugar, or dark brown sugar, packed

2 medium eggs

1/6 cup organic unsulfured molasses (blackstrap)

1/6 cup real maple syrup

Butter for greasing

large grain sugar (muscovado) for decoration

Method:
In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, salt and spices. Set aside.

In a food processor, blitz the ginger into a paste.

In a large bowl with an electric mixer cream the butter until it is light and fluffy. Add the sugar and mix again until light and creamy. Blend in the eggs one at a time and then the ginger paste, molasses and maple. Add the flour mixture in two additions either by hand or on low speed. Wrap dough in plastic and chill for an hour or so.
Heat oven to 200 degrees Celsius, and grease two baking trays.

Roll the dough out onto a lightly floured countertop roughly 1cm thick and cut into gingerbread men (or other fun shapes). Transfer to baking sheets and sprinkle with sugar (optional). Bake for 7 -10 minutes; less for smaller cookies, more for larger. Make sure you dont overcook them - they become dry and crisp the more you cook them so it really depends on your preference - I like slightly chewy cookies so 7 minutes was good.

Variation: Chocolate Flecked Gingerbread Cookies (shown below on left) - Add in a handful of finely chopped dark chocolate when rolling out the dough.

Makes about 1 dozen four-inch gingerbread men or 50 little bite sized cookies.

Honeyed quinoa and almond citrus cookies (no eggs, milk or butter)

These cookies are chewy, crunchy, soft, sweet, caramely, textured, warming, and perfect with tea.

I invented the recipe myself and I had three today - they are really wholesome and not sickly sweet - just naturally flavoured and sweetened. The combination of oats and quinoa makes good interesting textures while the base of almonds rounds them out as nutty and satisfying. You can taste the zing of the zest as well which is a nice touch.

Makes 20

Ingredients:
200 g of cooked red quinoa
200g almonds, toasted and chopped in food processor
100g oat flakes
100 g brown sugar
50 ml extra virgin olive oil
60 g of honey
50 g of SR flour
2 tablespoons lemon juice
100 ml of orange juice
1 tablespoon orange rind
1 tablespoon lemon rind

Method:
Preheat oven to 200º C.

Line an oven tray with baking paper.
Mix the oat flakes, almonds, flour and sugar.
Add honey, olive oil and orange and lemon juice and rinds. Mix!
Place tablespoons of the dough on the baking sheet. Don’t flatten. They will spread out during the cooking so leave large gaps (about 10cm) between cookies.
Bake for about 15 minutes till edges are brown.
Remove from oven. The cookies will be soft until they cool and harden so allow them to cool on a baking tray to keep their shape.

Orange Pulp Cookie Muffins

 

 

These cookies are a great way to use up orange pulp from juicing or from making marmalade!

Ingredients:

1 cup orange pulp

1 cup SR flour

1 tbsp quinoa flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 cup brown sugar

handful of sliced almonds

1 cup processed roasted almonds

3 tbsp maple syrup

1 tbsp margarine

1 egg

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C

Mix all together and place in cookie clumps on baking trays.

Bake till golden brown; approximately 15minutes.

Yum.  Kind of like a health food bar but more cake like and less dense - light.

They tasted just naturally sweet and crunchy while warm.

Next time I think I should add 1/2 cup yoghurt because although they were just right after cooking, the day after they were a tiny bit dry and needed a bit of gooing (maple syrup worked well).