Emergency Biscuits

I don't tend to buy biscuits. If there's an open packet in the house self control pretty much becomes a non-issue. (To call them biscuits or cookies? Can't decide. Watch me switch between the two...)


But then... sometimes... at the weekend... the gap between lunch and supper becomes an aching chasm and you need afternoon tea. Which demands biscuits.


Rejoice with me, then, that I found this recipe which is both allegedly healthy, speedy (good for biscuit-emergencies) and doesn't require eggs. The egg thing might seem unimportant, but recipes requiring an odd number of eggs are impossible to halve and therefore tend to result in oodles of cookies and the self-control thing mentioned above. With this recipe you can actually make the number of biscuits you want! (And just a couple extra for later, obviously.)

It's the BBC Good Food recipe for oat cookies with raisins, but it called Healthier Oat Cookies in my book-version, and I think is 'healthier' because you can use low-fat spread instead of butter (although if you like whole foods more than processed ones, butter would work too). They're a sort of cross between a biscuit and a flapjack.


The recipe crept even further up my favourites list when I realised you could play around with the ingredients very easily. Here's my chocolate-cinnamon version (I have a bit of a chocolate-cinnamon obsession) but I think lots of other flavour combinations would work, just make sure you get the 'dough' to the right consistency with the wet and dry ingredients.

Chocolate-Cinnamon Oat Cookies


100g olive oil spread (or butter, or whatever you have. I used Clover)
50g light muscovado sugar
2 tablespoons of honey
2 tablespoons of cocoa (or to taste, depending on how chocolatey you want them)
100g self-raising flour
100g oats
50g chocolate chips
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon


Preheat the oven to 170C and line a baking sheet with grease-proof paper.


Put the spread, sugar and honey into a small saucepan and melt together over a low heat. Once it's liquid, add the cocoa powder and stir to dissolve.


Measure the flour, oats, chocolate and cinnamon into a mixing bowl, then pour the sugary cocoa liquid over and stir until combined.


Place spoonfuls onto your baking sheet, I find the full recipe will make about 10-12. They don't really spread much during cooking, flatten them a bit if you want a more cookie shape, or leave them rounded for a more rock-cake look (like my first batch).


Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes until they're browned on the bottom.