Weekend Baking - Raisin, Cinnamon and Oat Biscuits

Instead of considering this a late recipe post it can be considered an early one for next weekend. I've been meaning to make biscuits for a while and considering they're so simple and quick to do I just haven't found the time. With the clocks going back yesterday I felt a bit more invigorated and made the effort to bake.

Raisin, Cinnamon & Oat Biscuits Ingredients 24 biscuits Gas Mark 5 (190°C/375°F) Preparation time: 20 minutes, baking: 10-15 minutes

100g unsalted butter - at room temperature
200g light brown sugar
1tsp golden syrup
1 medium egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
125 g self raising white flour
125 g medium oatmeal
100 g raisins
4tsp ground cinnamon - this is quite a bit, I love cinnamon, for a more subtle approach just go for 3tsp

As usual using the database on MFP I've worked out the nutritional value per biscuit:

117 Calories 18g Carbohydrates 4g Fat 2g Saturated Fat 1g Protein

Now only a few simple steps.

Start by pre-heating the oven and lining some baking sheets, the mix is quick and nothing needs to stand so it doesn't take long from start to finish.
Use a hand blender to mix the sugar with the room temperature butter, it will most likely get stuck in the blades a bit so I used a silicone spoon to pull blobs out intermittently. In the end I finished off the mix with just the spoon when it became too thick to use the hand blender.

Here goes

Now to add the wet ingredients, egg, golden syrup and vanilla extract. As I want to use the hand blender again I used the end of it (not turned on) to mash the ingredients together, once the mixture is a bit softer I use the hand blender to give it a quick blast before finally putting it to wash and going back to the spoon.

Hard to soft

Now we're moving even quicker. In a separate bowl I mixed the dry ingredients, flour, oats and cinnamon. I then turn half of this mix into the wet ingredients, mix thoroughly before adding the rest of the dry ingredients followed by the raisins. With the raisins I mix in a bit at a time as if you dump them all at once it can make it harder to spread around the whole mix. The mix will still be quite wet but slightly stiff, like a thick porridge or in my case, Ready Brek.

Dry, wet, balls! 

Next step is to ball them up. Take a ping pong size amount and roll them in your hands, it's really important to work them. I let my partner do a few towards the end and he was a bit lazy and although he made them into a ball he didn't really work them. You'll notice when they're rolled enough as at first they'll be sticky and your hands, a wet mess but eventually when worked enough they will be a perfect ball (see photo above) and won't stick to your hands.

To the left balls, to the right flattened balls

Once on the tray they need to be flattened. Again, if you have worked the balls you won't have an issue but I found when it came to James' attempt they were a bit too sticky. I find the best thing to use is a wooden rolling pin, a quick swift tap on the top will do the job, they only need to be flattened a bit, not to the size of a biscuit as they will spread.

Now all that is left to do is put them in the pre-heated oven for 10-15 minutes. They should be golden brown when you pull them out, although that isn't too different from when they go in. The thing to pay attention to is how they feel, use an egg slice/spatula to life one from the tray, it should still be soft but not completely floppy, they'll harden once cool. Pull them out and leave them to cool on a wire rack, job done.