I've become very bad at doing Christmas and especially presents. In fact Mr B&B even took me to see Scrooge's grave today in the hope that it might have the same effect on me that it had on Scrooge himself but sadly not. A little explanation here if you're not from Shrewsbury. The classic 1984 George C Scott version of A Christmas Carol was filmed in Shrewsbury. For the film they took an old gravestone in St Chad's graveyard and inscribed it with "Ebenezer Scrooge" and the gravestone remains there today.
Back to biscuits. Last year, 2 hours before attending a friend's Christmas party, I realised I had no presents so I did a quick search on the internet and found these cheese and oat biscuits.
These biscuits really are very good. They are flaky and cheesy and taste fantastic straight from the oven. But they are also very good bunged in a kilner jar ( once cool ) and tied with a ribbon and presented as a present. Best eaten whilst sipping a Prosecco or Kir Royale
Ingredients
75g rolled oats ( I swear by Shropshire Pimhill Farm Oats )
125g plain flour ( using OO pasta flour gives a great result but it's not essential )
85g cold butter cut into cubes
75g very strong cheddar ( Oakly Park Cheddar from the Ludlow Centre is good )
25g pecorino ( or you could use parmesan if you prefer )
2 egg yolks
1/2 tsp Maldon sea salt
1/4 tsp of cracked black pepper ( I love pepper, you may prefer less )
cold water
Optional ingredients that would be good are 1/2 tsp thyme leaves or chopped rosemary or a pinch of cayenne. Experiment with the cheeses or use whatever leftover cheese you have, provided it can be grated.
Method
Preheat the oven to fan 180 degrees C or 200 degrees C
Mix together the oats, flour, salt & pepper, herbs if using, and rub in the butter till you get the texture of large breadcrumbs. I just chuck it all in the mixer. Then grate in the cheese and mix well. Put in the egg yolks and mix together until you get a firm dough. Don't over mix. You may need to add a bit of water to get it into a dough.
Halve the dough and roll it out till it's quite thin. Then using a scone or biscuit cutter, cut out your biscuits. Pull any bits of dough back into a ball and keep rolling out and cutting biscuits until you've used all the dough.
Put on a baking tray ( I always line mine with a silicon liner ) and bake for 10 minutes until golden. There will be too many biscuits for one tray so I do mine in batches.
If you can manage not to eat them all from the baking tray then place them on a wire tray to cool.
