Rosemary Scottish Oatcakes
Incredibly easy to make with just a handful of everyday ingredients, oatcakes are the perfect partner to cheese, dips and spreads or alongside soups and salads.
In this version, the well-loved savoury biscuit or cracker is flavoured with aromatic rosemary: delicious spread with soft cheese flavoured with garlic and rosemary, topped with chopped sun-dried tomatoes, olives and more rosemary.
It's recommended you read the accompanying blog post before starting to cook. For the best results, use digital scales and metric measurements as these were used to test the recipe.
Ingredients
- 140 g rolled oats or porridge oats
- 140 g fine oatmeal (see Recipe Notes for making your own)
- 4 rounded tsp fresh rosemary leaves (finely chopped)
- ¾ tsp salt
- ¼ tsp black pepper
- 75 g butter, melted (or 75 ml oil e.g. olive)
- boiling water from a kettle
- wholemeal flour for rolling out (can be replaced with more oatmeal, but flour is recommended as it's less sticky)
Instructions
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Preheat your oven to 180° C /160° Fan /Gas 4 /350° F.
Line 2 or 3 baking trays with baking paper.
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Put the oats, oatmeal, rosemary, salt, and pepper in a mixing bowl and stir.
Make a well in the centre, pour in the melted butter or oil plus 100 ml of boiling water.
Stir quickly to bring everything together to form a soft dough. If the dough looks at all dry, add more boiling water without making it sloppy (see image in blog post for how it should look).
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Sprinkle some wholemeal flour over your worksurface, ideally covered with a silicone mat, and put the ball of dough on it.
Sprinkle the dough and a rolling pin with a little more flour and roll out to 3 mm for thin and crispy oatcakes, or up to 5 mm thick for crumblier ones. If you find the dough starts to come apart at the edges as you roll, just use your hands to push it back together and keep going. If the dough seems at all dry, sprinkle with a little water: the key to success is keeping the dough moist.
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Use a 7 cm cutter (or smaller if preferred) dipped in flour to stamp out oatcakes. As you cut them out, transfer the oatcakes to the paper-lined baking trays.
Gather up the scraps and keep re-rolling and cutting out to make more oatcakes. Note: you will almost certainly need to add more water to the scraps (cold water is ok) to bring them together.
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Put the trays in the oven and bake until the oatcakes are completely cooked through and a light golden brown (approx. 30 minutes unless you rolled them particularly thinly or thick).
- if baking more than one tray at a time, swap shelves halfway through.
- for even baking, turn the oatcakes over for the final 10 minutes.
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Cool on a wire rack and store in an airtight container once completely cold. Should keep for up to a month.
Recipe Notes
Oatmeal. You're more likely to find oatmeal in a wholefood store than a supermarket. However, you can easily make your own: whizz rolled oats or porridge oats in a food processor, blender, or coffee mill until fine.