Easy Oat Biscuits

[Rudi]

It's been a while since a recipe has been uploaded.
Here is a nice easy one for the weekend....enjoy!

Ingredients
75 grams = 3 oz (if you prefer cup measurements)

75 grams rolled oats
75 grams self-raising flour
75 grams sugar
75 grams margarine
1 tablespoon milk
1 tablespoon golden syrup

Method
Grease the baking trays and set the oven to bake
Pour the flour into a bowl
Add the sugar and oats and stir with a wooden spoon until it's all mixed well
Pour the milk and margarine into a frying pan, and as the margarine melts, add the golden syrup
Mix with a wooden spoon until it is a fairly soft mixture. Turn on the heat and melt the mixture into a liquid, until there are no bumps or lumps in the mixture
Once it is 100% liquid without any lumps, pour most of it in the mixing bowl and over the dry ingredients. Note: If you pour all of it, then it will become too sticky
Mix thoroughly
Take small pieces and roll into golf-sized balls with your hands
Place the balls on the greased baking tray and flatten them slightly
Bake for about 20 minutes, until the crunchies look golden brown
Allow to cool for a few minutes on a cooling tray

(TX Claude for the correction)

Oat Biscuits.jpg

[HansV]

Looks good - but dangerous for me. I'd probably eat them all before they had a chance to cool off completely...

[Rudi]

Looks good - but dangerous for me. I'd probably eat them all before they had a chance to cool off completely...

LOL... I have a tendency to get my fingers into the dough...and happily eat away at it before it even goes into the oven. I'm always first at the bowl whenever any baking has taken place...

[HansV]

And I learned something new - UK English uses self-raising flour, while US English uses self-rising flour.

Now when will we get self-raising children?

[Rudi]

Instead of one raisin a day, you must give them at yeast 10... self raisin comes quickly after that!

[Claude]

Pour the milk and margarine into a frying pan, and add the butter

I can't find the butter, also, how much ?

[DaveA]

What is Golden Syrup?

[Claude]

What is Golden Syrup?

Golden Syrup explained

[Rudi]

Pour the milk and margarine into a frying pan, and add the butter

I can't find the butter, also, how much ?

I didn't spot that discrepancy (haven't made it yet)!
I'd gather its a reference to the Golden Syrup, since nowhere else does it mention where/when to use it.
Add it slowly into the margarine and milk mix as it slowly heats up and melts.

I'll make the update in the recipe. (TX Claude)

[ChrisGreaves]

... to cool off completely...

They are supposed to cool?
I never knew that :fat:

[DaveA]

What happens if I do not use a "Wooden" spoon?

[Rudi]

What happens if I do not use a "Wooden" spoon?

If you use a metal spoon, the oats get magnetized. Not good for consumption...but float the biscuit in a bowl of milk and you'll get magnetic north.

[ChrisGreaves]

It's been a while since a recipe has been uploaded.

It's been a while since I tried a new recipe so I thought I’d give this one a try. I don’t have a wooden spoon so I used my bread-maker as a mixing device; I hope you don’t mind.

It said “75 grams = 3 oz (if you prefer cup measurements)” but the kitchen scales I rescued from Recycling are scaled in ounces, and the little glass Pyrex jug from the same source has got almost all of the red enamel lettering worn away, except for a bit near the bottom that says 50 ml, or it might be 170 ml; hard to see.

So when it said “75 grams margarine” I took a bit of a punt and scooped two heaped tablespoons of margarine from my 1 Kg tub of No-Name 68% vegetable oil margarine. In typing that I realize that you might have meant cooking margarine, the sort that comes in paper-wrapped bricks like my grandma used to buy in Morecambe; I only have the stuff in plastic tubs so that I can store leftover cooked brown rice in the tubs afterwards.

I realize too that I could just have up-scaled the recipe and used the whole 1 Kg of margarine, less the bit I’d used to slather my six slices of just-baked whole-wheat-flour and oatmeal loaf of bread, but then I’d have had to estimate how many grams of margarine I’d used on six slices, so if I have to estimate how much margarine I’m NOT going to use, why not, I asked myself, just estimate how much margarine I AM going to use and be done with it.
If you see what I mean.

So now I’m going to have to estimate “75 grams rolled oats” as well. I wish, at times like these, I knew just how many oats fit into the two little plastic-handled cups I generally use for baking. All the recipes I’ve dreamed up use multiples of these little white cups, so it’s pretty easy, but I never measure thing in terms of grams, let alone ounces nowadays.
I decided that I’d mix all the liquid-stuff together, toss in some flour (to bind everything) then just keep on ladling oats in until the mixture looked solid enough to spoon out onto a baking tray; otherwise I’d have to put it in my loaf tin and call it a cake, but my loaf tin hadn’t yet been washed and dried from the loaf-making exercise, so you see I was kind of forced back onto the “add until solid” method.

“75 grams self-raising flour”: As noted above, after I’d mixed the liquid-stuff (see below) I tossed in half a cup of flour, except I don’t use self-raising flour anymore, nor the N.Amer “All-purpose” flour; just whole-wheat, which I get in huge sacks from No-Frills about once a year and use a senior’s TTC ticket so I can haul the bundle-buggy home on the streetcar. I once dragged the bundle-buggy 25 minutes west along Carlton Street to save the $1.80 senior’s ticket fare, but it turns out I wasn’t getting fitter and stronger by the step; the triple-ply paper sack had sprung a leak on one of the bundle-buggy wires and I wound up being followed home by half the grey pigeons in Toronto. (“Toronto Star” May 17th 2012).

When it came to adding the 75 grams sugar, I did so by tossing it into the liquid stuff (see below), but you didn’t mention whether this was regular white (refined) sugar or brown sugar (i.e. regular white (refined) sugar with caramel colouring added to make it look healthy). I only have a jar of the brown, so I used that. I didn’t think it would affect the outcome of the recipe.

OK. Now we are at the liquid stuff, and this is really where I started: I rinsed out my little cylindrical bread-making tub. I wasn’t too worried about spotless clean, figuring that a trace of yeast and a smidgen of whole wheat flour wouldn’t make any difference. But it was rinsed out. I’ve found it to be a smart move to rinse the tub and beater out with clean water between consecutive uses because that way small steel teaspoons show up before I turn the thing on again!

So, into the tub went “1 tablespoon milk”, but I poured it from the jug because I wanted the tablespoon to be clean for the margarine (see “68% vegetable oil ” above). 3.35% milk, none of this skim or 1% nonsense, on account of my long walks and better diet causing my weight to come down quite nicely, thank you, and I figure I’m actually saving money by drinking coffee in my apartment with 3.25% milk instead of dropping $3 for a flavoured medium size at The Marriot across the street, even with The Wall Street Journal and The Globe And Mail thrown in. There is a limit to the number of crossword puzzles I can do in a day and still have time for pastimes such as baking, short-story writing and so on.

When I got to “1 tablespoon golden syrup” I was on home ground, because I’d just finished writing up a chapter of my new book “The ‘Cross I Bare”, and had been describing the Tate And Lyle Golden Syrup and Tate And Lyle Treacle my mother used when baking stuff for the Parochial Church Council meetings in Southern Cross. Yet, although I knew what it was, I didn’t actually have any, because I buy “Selection” fancy molasses; it’s real cheap and can be found in Aisle 4 of The Dollarama in the basement level of College Park, and I always decant it into an empty Billy-Bee honey bottle because then I’ll be able to dribble it lightly over pancakes (Fr: “crepes”) if I ever pluck up the courage to make crepes with whole-wheat flour. Even ‘though Mum died over 20 years ago, she’s still watching, you know!

So, there you are. Full-cream Milk, Molasses into the tub and set the beater thing going. Toss in the 68% vegetable oil margarine and watch to see how it ends up.

It ended up broken up into little thumb-nail size pieces so I went out on a limb and broke an egg into it, thinking that a liquid of a slightly-different texture might make all the difference; besides, I’m collecting egg-shells for my experiment in natural-acids breaking down egg-shells, a means of dispelling the myths about Red Wrigglers eating egg-shells in vermicomposters.

So, there you are. Full-cream Milk, Molasses, Margarine and an egg; It lacked only Gustav Holtz “The Planets” suite to make it surreal. I tossed in the two big lumps of brown sugar that had formed on top of the jar of brown sugar, figuring that the lumps either would dash the margarine into smithereens, or they would serve as rollers to squash the margarine fragments. By now “Mars The Bringer of War” from The Planets was alive and well, running through my brain to the accompaniment of a steady drumming from the tub-beater as it executed each circuit with a lump of sugar.

In went the flour, then I basically just poured oats in, watching for the moment when the mixture appeared to solidify, which it was pretty close to doing just as the level of the mixture came up to the top of the tub, so I left the planets orbiting while I put away containers from the kitchen counter, turned on the oven to pre-heat and greased my cookie tray from the jar of clarified chicken-fat that I keep in a screw-top jar in the shelf of the freezer door.

A solid mixture isn’t all that critical anyway; I find that an hour on the fridge makes most things gel up something lovely.

The rest of it was pretty straightforward. You’ll notice that I didn’t use heat (as in “Turn on the heat and melt the mixture into a liquid” so I’m not sure whether I’d get ecological Brownie Points for that.
“... pour most of it in the mixing bowl and over the dry ingredients. Note: If you pour all of it, then it will become too sticky” made me stop and think for a minute. Why would I mix it all but then use only part of it? I decided to treat this part of the recipe as flexible in nature.

HPIM7695.JPG

Anyway, they turned out quite nicely as you can see.
Next time I’ll have to try a faster camera speed.

P.S. I forgot to mention that I added a teaspoon or so of ground ginger to give the taste a bit of a kick. This is quite daring of me, because I have curry powder in the same cupboard in the same size jar. There’s a story there, but I’ll keep it for next time.

[Rudi]

Well, if this isn't the loooooooongest single post I have seen, then I'm going cookies.
This is a cooking documentary of planetary proportions Chris, and quite entertaining to read. One just needs to understand that the mixer is the center of the universe, churning the dough balls under its mechanical gravitational forces. If the mixer is the sun, and your kitchen is the universe then you must be a heavenly baker.

When it comes to biscuits, I never go by the recipe. I know that biscuit dough must be dry and mailable so I just throw the ingredients together in approx. proportions until the dough seems right. In addition, I'd add some raisins and other goodies, depending on the biscuits to make.

Reg. the photo... Gosh, you downed them quickly. They must have been good to eat... I look forward to making my batch. TX for the feedback re this recipe. I'm rather excited now to try it myself. I'm traveling next week, so I'll need to put it on hold for a week

[ChrisGreaves]

... you must be a heavenly baker.

Well, true. I'm making much more dough now that I'm retired

[Rudi]

Yep, being retired, you can spend money hours in your kitchen needing dough.

[HansV]

I'm traveling next week, so I'll need to put it on hold for a week

Why wait? As Chris shows so clearly, the whole process from start to stomach won't take more than an hour...

[Leif]

....I only have the stuff in plastic tubs so that I can store leftover cooked brown rice in the tubs afterwards.

I am ashamed to admit that it is only relatively recently that I discovered how dangerous reheated rice can be - see for example Why Reheated Rice Can Give You Food Poisoning | Lifehacker Australia. I assume there is no reason why brown rice should be any safer than 'white' rice?

[HansV]

In itself, I don't think brown rice would be safer than white rice. But I've never had problems with reheated brown rice. I do make sure it's thoroughly heated.

[Leif]

I do make sure it's thoroughly heated.

My understanding of the danger is not in the reheating, but how quickly you had cooled it down.