Oat Cookies

Several years back, before we were even married, my husband bought one of those ready-made cone ice-creams and was eating it.  Some of these ice-creams have some chocolate hidden at the bottom of the cone which is crunchy.  So he was coming towards the end of the cone and had this nice crunchy feel when he reached the end of the cone and realized his ice cream was vanilla and they usually never have this chocolate at the end.  So he looked at it closer and found that it was a frozen cockroach.  This is when his phobia with cone ice creams started.  He can never eat a cone ice cream without looking at it continually, especially when it reaches the biscuit part.

So yesterday was one of those beautiful spring evenings where we went for a walk in the city and on the way bought our first ice cream cones of the season.  There were a couple of new flavours this season, but I opted for my favourite – pistachio.  My husband chose his favourite which is yoghurt with berries and of course was conscious of what he eating because of the episode mentioned above.  My son selected all flavours with the word “chocolate” in them and my daughter went for strawberry.  I am not sure whether she opted for the flavour or for the fact that it was the only pink ice cream.  Then of the way back we counterbalanced the cold with some warm fries – a perfect Belgian spring weekend.

I had some Oat Germ in the cupboard and wanted to include in the below recipe.  So instead of 75 grams of oats, I took only 50 grams and substituted 25 grams of oat germ in the recipe.  The cookies had more of a texture with this and the children loved it.

Preparation Time: 20 minutes

Serves: 24 cookies

Ingredients:

50 grams honey

125 grams unsalted butter

100 grams castor sugar

75 grams oats

50 grams desiccated coconut

100 grams flour

2 teaspoons soda bicarbonate

Method:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl except the sugar.  
2. Melt the honey and butter together in a small pan.  Cool slightly and then add to the dry ingredients and mix well.  
3. Add sugar to this now and mix.  
4. Form ½” diameter balls and place on a dry greased tray and flatten a bit before baking.  
5. Bake in a preheated oven at 170 degrees C for 15 minutes.  
6. Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack before serving or storing in air tight containers.

Tip:  When melting the honey and butter mixture, do not allow the liquid to become very hot.  If this is added to the dry ingredients when it is hot, the biscuits may not spread when they are being baked and may be rather tough.