I very rarely make sweets and desserts, but just occasionally the urge strikes me. I really like the oat biscuit bars that you can buy (like Geobars, and the Jordans ones) but they're quite expensive. I've got some oats in the cupboard anyway, so I thought I'd have a go at making them myself.
As always, I turned to Google for recipe research and found thousands of combinations, all very similar but different. I took a couple of ideas from a few different ones to make my own spin on them doubtless I'll revisit this recipe again and make them slightly differently each time!
The technique comes from Mumsnet, because it seemed to be the simplest, but I changed the ingredients around to suit my own tastes.
First of all, start the oven heating up to 170C.
Next, we need to melt together 100g of butter, 50g of brown sugar and 40g of golden syrup. Personally, I don't think spread has any health benefits over butter (unless you've got an intolerance to dairy, obviously) but feel free to substitute spread or margerine for the butter if you want. Honey should work fine instead of golden syrup, too.
I melted these together just by sticking them in the microwave on 25% power for about three minutes, checking frequently. If you haven't got a microwave, mix them all together over a very low heat, making sure not to burn the butter. I think you'd have to be seriously careless to burn butter in a microwave, so that's probably the safest option.
While the butter/sugar/golden syrup mix is melting in the microwave, weigh out 100g of oats, 100g of self-raising flour and 50g of raisins, and grate an apple.
Now put everything together in a large bowl...
...and mix it all up until it's consistent. Make sure to lick the spoon, the mixture is delicious.
Grease a baking tray and spoon the mixture out into little cakes. I used a heaped tablespoonful of the mixture for each cake and just dropped them onto the baking tray - home-made biscuits should look a little bit rustic, I think!
Bake for 15 minutes, and resist the temptation to eat one as soon as you take them out of the oven.
Taste verdict
I'm really satisfied with these! Not too crunchy, just the right texture, and of course you can put anything you like in them. If you don't fancy my apple and raisin mix, use different dried fruits. You could add things like ginger or cinnamon, too. The possibilities are endless!
Granted they contain butter and sugar, but they do also contain fruit - you could see these as a particularly tasty way to get one of your five-a-day in.
Financial verdict
100g butter
50g brown sugar
40g golden syrup
100g oats
100g self-raising flour
50g raisins
An apple
It's quite difficult to cost this, because it's all stuff I had in the house anyway, and it's all stuff that you'd buy big bags of. I wanted to have a stab though, so here's an idea of what it would cost if you went to Waitrose to buy everything you need in one go. Prices are from the Waitrose website.
250g pack of Country Life butter £1.50
500g bag of Billington's Fairtrade Demerara sugar £1.39. That's what I happened to have in the cupboard, but the cheapest one on the Waitrose website is a Tate & Lyle one at 99p for 500g.
454g Lyle's Golden Syrup, in a pourable squeezy bottle, 85p. The price per kilo is lower in the old-fashioned tins, but I like the convenience of the squeezy bottle.
500g bag of oats. The cheapest one is the Waitrose Essential at 62p, but for some reason I went for the Sainsbury's Taste the Difference ones when I bought mine. No idea why - oats are oats, surely!
500g bag of self-raising flour 48p. The cost per kilo drops quite considerably if you buy a bigger bag.
500g Waitrose Essential Raisins £1.56
An apple. I normally buy them loose, but the Waitrose website lists bags of six Empires for £1, making them 17p each.
So, if you went out and got everything it would cost £6.57. You'd need to top up on butter and apples, but otherwise this would make 5 batches of biscuits (I got nine biscuits out of these quantities but they're all different sizes - I'd aim for 10 consistent ones next time) with some ingredients left over. Geobars cost £2.03 for six bars, so they're 34p each. Mine are 13p each!
The skinny
Put 100g butter, 50g brown sugar and 40g golden syrup together in a bowl and microwave on low power until melted
Put 100g oats, 100g self-raising flour, 50g raisins and the grated flesh of one apple into a large bowl
Add the melted butter mixture and stir until everything is mixed together
Grease a baking tray and make biscuits by dropping one tablespoonful of mixture per biscuit onto the tray, leaving a bit of space for them to expand
Bake at 170C for 15 minutes
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