Recipe : Healthy Biscuits

​Biscuits
 
 
These biscuits are for snacking on either with or without a drink. They can also be crumbled up (be brave use your hands) and turned into breakfast muesli.
 
Two cups of rolled oats
4 teaspoons baking powder
4 tablespoons of a vegetable oil
2 teaspoons of vanilla essence
Soya milk or buttermilk
A tablespoon of cornflour
 
Pumpkin kernels
Sunflower seeds
Sesame seeds
Dried fruit (anything you fancy: dates; raisons; stone fruit…anything )
Chopped nuts (any type you fancy: must be unsalted; walnuts, almonds, macadamia…anything)
Preserved ginger
Spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, cloves
 
Add rolled oats, cornflour  and baking powder to a food processor and give a good whirl.
Add oil and vanilla essence to a bowl. Add about half a cup of soya milk. Wisk the wet ingredients.  Add the flour to the bowl.  You will now need to add further soya milk until you get the right consistency which is moist but firm. The mixture should be moist enough so that it binds together and can be spooned onto a baking dish and firm enough so that it retains most of its shape (you don’t want it to collapse and run over the baking dish).
Lightly mix all the ingredients together.
 
Add a bit of sparkle. Choose something from the list.  Choose one, two or three things. You can go with more than this but if you do you normally end up with something duller and less interesting.
 
Place tablespoons of the mixture of a baking dish. I line the dish with baking paper. You can grease the dish if you prefer.
 
Bake at about 200 Degrees C for about twenty minutes.
 
Take out and place on a wire rake so that air can circulate around the biscuits. Place the biscuits back in the oven. At about 90 to 100 degrees C. Your aim is to dry them out. To turn them into rusks. This will take three to four hours. To check when ready tap on the bottom. It should be firm. Or break one open to check. There should be no moisture inside the biscuits.
Let them cool completely before storing. This will take hours or even overnight. When cooled you want the biscuits to be hard and crunchy not flexible and chewy.
 
Every time I make this recipe I add different ingredients. Different oils, different essences or different grains.
 
Some good combinations:
 
Orange essence, date, almonds
 
Vanilla essence, sunflower seeds, pumpkin kernels, sesame seeds and dates
 
One cup of semolina plus one cup rolled oats, rose water, dried apricots, almonds
 
Butter milk, star of anise, sultanas and raisons. If you add some spice you often need to add some minimal sugar to provide balance. How much is up to you.
 
One cup of ground almonds, one cup of semolina replacing the rolled oats, almond essence, chopped almonds
 
Vanilla essence, preserved ginger, chopped macadamia
 
Two cups of wholegrain flour, vanilla essence, dates, dried apricots, buttermilk