Oatcakes 2

These are the oatcakes I've been making recently; crunchier, shorter than the ones I posted the other day. I'm about to make them with a little parmesan grated into the mix, so that we can eat them before dinner (actually, it will be with a glass of wine in the interval of Turandot at the cinema).

300g oatmeal (just blitz some porridge oats if you don't have oatmeal)
seeds - I generally use sunflower, and there are more every time I make these
75ml olive oil
a pinch of salt
black pepper

Mix everything together, gather it into a ball, then roll out as thin as you can. Mine are always notable for being uneven, which means you choose thick or thin to go with your cheese. Cut them into shapes. You can keep on gathering up the mixture until it's all shaped.

Bake at 180C for 15 minutes on each side. Cool on a rack.

Related links

The clear message from these previous posts is that oatcakes are far far nicer if you don't use any water.

Oatcakes
Oatcakes I made years ago and then forgot about

Oatcakes

Last night I made oatcakes. Easy peasy. Delicious. Far cheaper to bake at home (also no plastics or other wrapping). I'm ashamed it's taken me so long, and that the impetus was laziness: it was easier to make them than to go out and buy some.

Oatcakes

250g rolled oats
a pinch of bicarb
a pinch of salt
1 tbsp butter
very hot water

Begin by making oatmeal from the rolled oats; blitz them in a food processor until they are coarse or fine crumbs, depending on the texture you are aiming for in the finished biscuits.

Tip them into a big bowl. Add the salt and bicarb, then stir in the melted butter (you could use olive oil). Add the water very slowly - you want as little as possible, just enough to make the oats stick together. I'd be surprised if I used more than 100ml.

Gather the oats up into a ball, then roll them out as thin as you can. Either stamp them into little rounds, or make traditional farls* by cutting a large circle into six.

Put the cakes onto a baking sheet and bake in a hot oven (200c) for 15-20 minutes. Watch them carefully towards the end; you want them just beginning to turn brown at the edges. I baked mine in the wood oven; the temperature was rising from 180 to 210 while they were in, and they took 18 minutes. I suspect they are pretty forgiving.


* I've just discovered that farl comes from Viking for 1/4, but these days farls of oatcake and shortbread are cut into six rather than four.

Old-fashioned parkin

At Beamish they were making Parkin the old-fashioned way:



































































Fabulous coal range .... and did you notice the bread oven to the right? If you want to make Parkin - a kind of north country flapjack - just mix the ingredients together, shape the biscuits (or spread into a tin to cut into squares when it's cooled), and bake in a hot oven. Mmm