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Sunday tea in our house is often “bits and bobs”. In other words, I have run out of culinary ideas and energy by this point in the weekend and the fridge is full of assorted delicious leftovers that don’t normally constitute ingredients for a new meal. However, we nearly always have cold meat, cheese, salad and home-made chutney lurking. (see post for Blackberry Chutney and Tomato and Chilli Chutney). Bread seems to disappear in our house in the blink of an eye (my children have a tendency to feed it to anything with wings, even the scabby fat seagulls). These lovely, crumbly, wholesome biscuits come into their own on these occasions and help to bring together a tasty meal in a few moments.
These are superb for packing in a rucksack for a well- earned picnic on a long walk. Team with a chunk of best flinty cheddar, some sweet tomatoes, apples, a small container for your home-made chutney and a can of ginger beer and you have a picnic the Famous Five would have declared “simply marvellous”. The following quote makes me smile:
‘I don’t know why, but the meals we have on picnics always taste so much nicer than the ones we have indoors,’ said George.”
― Enid Blyton, Five Go Off In a Caravan
But these savoury biscuits are are also impressive to serve with the cheese board at a dinner party. So you see, there is no excuse not to make these every weekend!
Please note that the recipe calls for “medium oatmeal”. This is not the same as porridge oats or interchangeable. You should be able to find it near to porridge oats in the cereal isle of the supermarket.
This dough does have the tendency to be rather crumbly. If the biscuits are too fragile they will disintegrate as you put your cheese on- irritating. The answer is to add enough milk to make the dough stickier than your usual biscuit dough and knead it slightly. When re-rolling the scraps after cutting rounds, you may need to add a few more drops of milk.
The picture above uses Gooseberry and Cranberry Chutney which is incredible. I will be posting a recipe for this in the next few days.
This recipe was originally adapted from Delia Smiths “Oatmeal Biscuits” published in “The Delia Collection- Baking”. However, over time, I have tweaked the ingredient list and method somewhat (this is not intended as a snub on Delia’s original recipe which is wonderful).
Ingredients
180 g plain wholemeal flour
45 g medium oatmeal
10 g light muscovado sugar
1 tsp baking powder
0.25 tsp salt
0.25 tsp mild curry powder
110 g lightly salted butter, softened
1- 1.5 tbsp milk
Tin
2 baking sheets lined with baking parchment
Oven
Pre-heat the oven to 180C (160C Fan)/ Gas Mark 4
Method
1. Measure all of the dry ingredients into a bowl and give them a stir.
2. Rub the butter in using your finger tips (or you can whizz in a food processor if you prefer) until you have the texture of fine breadcrumbs.
3. Add enough milk (start with 1 tsp) to give you a slightly sticky dough. Knead it lightly and briefly.
4. Tip the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and roll out to a thickness of 2-3 mm.
5. Use a 7cm smooth sided round cutter to cut out the biscuits trying to get a “sharp edge”. Re-roll the scraps until you have cut out as many rounds as possible.
6. Carefully place the biscuits onto the baking sheet, leaving a little space between them and bake in the centre of the oven for 15 minutes. The biscuits should only be lightly golden.
7. Leave the biscuits on the baking sheet to cool a little (2 or 3 minutes) before carefully transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.
8. These biscuits keep well for 4/5 days in an airtight tin.
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