Oat Biscuits

As part of my healthy lifestyle, I have been experimenting with various snacks and trail mixes that are robust enough to be carried when out and about, but filling, nutritious and above all else tasty!

I have taken to making these myself so that I know 100% the ingredients in them.

Having seen a recent social media post by Pario Gallico (Historical food and craft demonstrations)  I decided to give their recipe for honey oat cakes a go.

These oat biscuits are gluten free and benefit from the nutritional value of whole grains.

Whilst cooked at home in an oven, these biscuits can easily be made in camp, on an open fire, using a skillet or even a hot stone.

Recipe

• 500 grams rolled oats
• 210 grams honey
• 115 grams butter
• 2 pinches of salt
• 60ml of hot liquid of your choice (water, milk, ale etc.)
• Optional extras. Seeds, fruit, nuts etc.

For this batch I experimented with dark chocolate chips and dried mixed fruits.

What you will need

• Scales
• A large mixing bowl
• A robust wooden spoon
• A baking tray lined with baking parchment or grease proof paper.

Method

1. Melt the butter and honey together in a pan.
2. Mix all dry ingredient together in a large mixing bowl.
3. Add the heated liquid of your choice directly to the oats and pour on the melted butter and honey whilst its still hot.
4. Mix well until all the liquid is absorbed.
5. Keep mixing and kneading with the spoon until the mixture turns sticky and binds together
6. Leave to cool for 5 to 10 minutes and then shape balls of dough approximately golf ball sized (~30 grams) into flat biscuits approximately 6 mm thick.
7. Bake at 180 degrees Centigrade for 12 to 15 minutes until golden brown on top.
8. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the tray – they are quite soft when warm.

The hot liquid is key to this recipe. It allows the oats to release Avenin, a gluten like protein that makes the oats sticky and helps bind all the ingredients together. For this batch I kept it simple and used hot water just off the boil.

I followed the recipe closely to form the basic mixture and then divided this into portions to allow a range of different additional ingredients to be added.

I found adding additional ingredients post mixing was not ideal. The added ingredients didn’t combine well and would have been much more evenly distributed had I included them from the start. However, for my experimental purposes it worked well enough for me to get an understanding of the flavour combinations that worked for me.

In the end, the above ingredients resulted in 30 generous sized biscuits in the following combinations:

• Plain honey
• Honey and mixed fruit
• Honey and dark chocolate chip
• Honey with mixed fruit and dark chocolate chip

One of these biscuits takes the edge off of an appetite and two is certainly filling! Once cooled, they stored really well and were robust enough to be transported without breaking up easily.

What do they taste like?

Well I think the best word is Yummy!  The honey makes them naturally quite sweet which suits my sweet tooth. My favourite combination was the honey and mixed fruit.

I found the chocolate ones were slightly bitter (this was down to the really dark chocolate I used) and the chocolate melted easily in the moderate temperatures we have had this summer. Not so good if you are carrying this in an outdoors environment.

What would I do differently next time?

I would definitely add the additional dry ingredients in at the beginning so they were evenly distributed and coated in the honey/avenin helping them consolidate.

I would also chop up the mixed fruit into a lot smaller pieces to help it combine well.

What’s next?

I plan on making some with mixed seeds and experimenting with smarties/M&Ms to see if these get over the chocolate melting problem.

What’s your favourite carry snack when you are out practicing bushcraft and survival skills?