Oat and Fruit Cookies

Fancy a cuppa? My Oat and Fruit cookies may be lovely company with a cup of tea. 

Crunchy outside and slightly soft inside .... that's how I like them, but you can make them really crunchy by baking them a bit longer if you like. A lovely cinnamon aroma spreads in the kitchen when they are being baked. The dough is very sticky, so using your hands to shape them is a messy job. I used 2 spoons to make a round-ish shape and dropped it on the baking tray. I quite like this rustic look. :) 

Ingredients   

• 3 oz Brown Sugar 

  

  One of the cookies turned out a heart shape... awwww.

• 4 oz Caster Sugar

• 4 oz  Unsalted Butter (or Low-Fat Margarine if you prefer) 

• 6 oz Plain Flour

• 5 oz Rolled Oats

• 5 oz Dried Fruit (and/or some nuts)

• 1 Egg

• 1/2 tsp Cinnamon 

• 1/2 tsp  Baking Powder 
• 1/2 tsp  Salt    

Method

1. Heat the oven to 170°c.
2. Put the brown sugar, caster sugar and butter into a mixing bowl and whisk them together until it has become smooth.
3. Add all the rest of the ingredients into the bowl with the butter and sugar mixture.
4. Mix everything together so that it is all evenly distributed. Then shape it into a ball with your hands.
5. Lightly flour your work surface and then roll out the ball of cookie dough to a thickness of about 4mm. 
6. Using a cookie cutter, cut out the cookies and put them onto a non-stick baking tray (or one lined with greaseproof paper)
7. Put the cookies into the 170°c oven and bake them for 15 minutes.
8. When they are cooked, remove them from the oven and leave them to cool on the baking tray for 3 minutes or so before putting them on a wire rack and allow them to cool to room temperature.

   

Summer Forest Berry Muffins

We have been having really rainy summer this year in Britain. Where has summer gone? 

So, here is another rainy weekend, but still I can enjoy baking. :)

First, I baked a batch of flapjack (click for the recipe) with walnuts and prunes. While the flapjack was baking in the oven, I prepared the muffins. I really love fresh blueberry muffins, but here are "Summer Forest Berry Muffins" which are inspired by my favourite English Summer Pudding, which includes several kinds of berries. Yes, you can see lots of berries in the muffins. I used frozen mixed berries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, redcurrants and blackcurrants. It's quite handy keeping a bag of frozen mixed berries in the freezer as you can get almost the same lovely juicy flavour as fresh berries.... and you can bake whenever you feel like it without rushing to the supermarket. The only thing you have to remember using frozen berries is NOT to defrost the berries before mixing the batter. Put the frozen berries straight from the freezer into the dry mixture, them add the wet mixture as usual. As I love berries I put about 170g of berries in this mixture... and they were delicious!! But you may not need that much. 125-150g of frozen berries would be just lovely! 

Ingredients 

• 200g Plain Flour

• 150g Sugar

• 2 tsp Baking Powder

• ¼ tsp Salt

• 100ml Milk

• 75ml Vegetable Oil  (5 Tbsp)

• 1 Egg

• ¼ tsp Vanilla Extract 

• 1 tsp  Lemon juice 
• 125g Frozen mixed berries   

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200 C / Gas 6 and add paper cases to a muffin tray.

2. Measure out flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl and mix well. Then add the frozen mixed berries. (DO NOT defrost the berries. When the berries are added do not mix until the wet mixture is added)  

3. Measure milk and oil in a large measuring jug. Add egg, lemon juice and vanilla, then whisk well.

4. Add the wet mixture (3) into the dry mixture (2).  Stir until just combined. The mixture will be lumpy.     Do NOT over mix.    Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown on top