Oat biscuits

This is one quick and easy baking recipe when you feel like making a small batch of something sweetish to gnaw on. These are also great to take to work as a snack or just have with some coffee or tea. This is quite a Finnish style oat biscuit, thin yet little chewy in the middle and crispy around the edges. Here's the recipe.

Ingredients

50 g butter

1 dl sugar

2 dl oat flakes

1 tbsp wheat flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 egg

Method

Melt the butter and sugar together in a pan. Take off the heat and mix in the other ingredients quickly to make an even dough.

Place about 1-2 tbsp of the dough for each biscuit onto a baking paper. Leave enough space between them, as they will spread in the oven.

Bake them in the oven at 200 C for about 5-8 minutes. And all done!

Your VegHog

Shortbread

Shortbread is a wonderful crumbly biscuit originating from medieval Scotland, which has kept its popularity until this day. Only three ingredients (butter, sugar, flour) are needed, but the making can be trickier than you think.

 

This was my first time making shortbread just on the eve of the Burns Night. They turned out pretty good, but I'm still determined to make better and more authentic ones next time. I have based my experiment on a recipe on the BBC Food page, and these are the results. 

125 g butter

55 g caster sugar + some extra for dusting

180 g wheat flour

Whisk the soft butter and sugar and add flour. Knead to a dough, which can be quite crumbly. Roll the dough into about 1 cm thickness.

Cut the shortbread out with a round or rectangular cookie cutter, place them on baking paper and sprinkle with caster sugar.

Chill the shortbread in the fridge for about 20 minutes.

Finally bake them at 190C for about 15-20 minutes. Try to avoid browning, which I couldn't quite manage this time due to my slightly thinner shortbread and lack of keeping an eye on the oven.

Chill for a while and enjoy with a nice cup of tea or coffee.

Your VegHog

Cheddar biscuits

For these biscuits I once again got inspiration from The Good Cook on the BBC when I saw him cook some Parmesan biscuits. The Good Cook doesn't cook entirely vegetarian food but quite often he has many tempting vegetarian ideas, so I like following his programme. You can find his original recipe for the biscuits here.

And here's what The VegHog used:

75 g Butter

100 g Flour

100 g Mature Cheddar

1 Egg

Chili flakes

Salt

Grate the cheese finely, saving about a quarter for the topping. Make a pastry by mixing soft butter with the flour, cheese, salt and dried chili flakes. Mix until they are bound into a firm pastry. If you are lucky enough to own a food processor, you can let it do the work for you. Wrap the pastry in a piece of cling film and let it settle in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Roll out the pastry on a floury surface into a thin sheet and cut pieces out with a cookie cutter or a knife. This pastry is very easy to roll and cut as it's very smooth.

Place the biscuits on a greased baking tray and brush them with beaten egg. Sprinkle a little grated cheese over them.

Bake at 180C for about 10 minutes or until they're golden brown.

Mine didn't look so pretty in the end but main thing that they taste good. These are lovely cheesy snacks but quite rich at the same time. In my opinion the flavour develops itself better when they have cooled down.