Oat cakes

I like oats a lot. I've been looking for a good oaty cookie recipe for some time, and was really happy to find one in The Country Cooking of Ireland. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the cookies to work. Whenever I tried to cut one out, the thing would blow up as the oats at the edge were caught under the cookie cutter and pushed the rest of the biscuit apart. I don't fault the recipe -- it may be that the oats we have over here aren't quite the same as those on the Emerald Isle. Anyway, ever undaunted, I perservered and came up with what I think is a genius solution. Read on!

This recipe is pure oaty goodness. You need 0.5 cup of butter melted with 2 tbs of water, 2 cups of rolled oats, 0.5 cup of flower, 0.75 tsp salt, and 0.5 tsp baking soda. (Notice -- no sugar!) The first step is to melt the butter with the water. Heat the oven to 350 at the same time.

And now the genius -- grease two muffin tins. I'm sure someone has thought of this before, but it was a brainwave for me, and it works really well with this recipe. Baking the cookies in the muffin tin gives them uniform shape, keeps them from busting up when they are formed, and gives them some support while they bake and cool. I grease all but the front row which stays empty because it is too close to the oven door and doesn't bake as well as the rest of the tray.

Mix all the dry ingredients, then add the butter and mix some more. This will yield a crumbly batter.

Put a heaping tablespoon of batter into each of the greased muffin forms. Then pat the mixture down. I used the middle and index fingers of both hands and did a little finger dance on each cake. Make sure in particular that the edges are tucked in -- they can end up brittle there. This is pretty slow, and you could probably do it faster by mushing one muffin tin down on the other, but as we know; with the exception of racing, doing something faster almost never means doing something better.

Slide the trays into the oven for about 25 minutes. When you take them out, they should look lightly toasted -- a little darker at the edges. Let them sit in the trays for a little while to cool.

Then very gently ease the cakes out (I used a butter knife) and put them on a wire rack. Let them rest uncovered, overnight to firm up. I hope you like 'em!