Oats

A little while back I posted a recipe for homemade digestive biscuits and mentioned the type of oats I used as being 'Steel Cut'. Turns out I was wrong. I think what I used was just thick cut rolled oats.
This video here at Harvest Eating dot com shows what Steel Cut oats look like.
Mine still take a while longer to cook than the usual rolled oats however.

Homemade digestive biscuits

This is a recipe my Mother sent to me from England some time ago. I used Steel cut oats rather than rolled oats, mainly as I bought a bag in error...doing my usual snatch and grab technique... and they do take a lot longer to cook for porridge so I prefer rolled oats for that. However, I think they gave the biscuits a nice texture so I'll use them again in this recipe.




100g wholemeal flour
100g butter
100g oatmeal (rolled oats or the larger "steel cut" oats)
50g soft brown sugar
a pinch of salt
1 tsp baking powder

Mix the dry ingredients then rub in the butter until "breadcrumbs". Add about 1 Tbsp milk, mix with hands to form a firm dough.
Roll out (between 2 layers of plastic film) to about 3mm thick.
Put in fridge for a short time to firm up, then cut out biscuits with a cookie cutter (with the larger oats this was slightly tricky, I didn't worry too much about making perfect circles).
Bake on greased tray for about 15mins at 180deg C. Cool on rack immediately.

Spelt flour bread

I've not had a lot of success making brown bread in the bread maker. I purchased some organic spelt flour (amongst some other grains like rye, millet and cornmeal) with the thought of getting busy making bread by hand. So far that has been the exception rather than the rule and the good old bread maker is certainly very convenient time-wise even if it doesn't bake the most nutritious bread. Also G takes his own lunch so we need to have bread on hand for sandwiches.
Anyway the spelt flour seems to perform well.

I have a Sunbeam bread maker and I followed the recipe for white bread 750g size, substituting 200g of spelt flour for the white.

315ml water (tepid if you are not using timer option)
1 Tbsp butter
600g flour (*I used 200g spelt flour)
1 Tbsp milk powder
1 Tbsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 tsp bread maker yeast (note this is for NZ conditions, other countries may require less or more yeast)

Bake according to your bread maker instructions, I chose a light crust.

Honey flapjack

This recipe is one passed down from my mother Ann, who is an excellent cook (or "cooker" as I used to call her when I was young!). We were lucky as we always had lots of home baked goodies in the biscuit tin. Many meals on the dinner table were made from produce out of her vege garden or gathered from the wild (berries, crab apples, mushrooms).

Flapjack is also dead easy to make and it tastes delicious.

100g butter
100g caster sugar
2 dessert spoons honey
150g rolled oats (I use organic)
My dish is about 20 x 20cm, the mixture needs to be spread out quite thinly to crisp up nicely.

Melt butter and honey on low heat in a saucepan.
Add sugar and oats. Stir to mix.
Spread into greased (buttered) dish.
Bake at about 160 deg C for 20mins or until golden brown.
Mark into squares when hot, then cut into squares when cold.