Caramel Oat Bars

With emphasis on the caramel.

Imagine you are a slice living in my house. Your main goal in life as a slice is to be eaten but more importantly is to win the affection of me, Sophie so I will make you over and over again. How does a slice win my affections? Well the same way anyone does; with chocolate, caramel and enough sugar to turn a health freak into a diabetic in one bite.

This slice is a winner, no doubt about that. Sure the others I have posted about have the chocolate and the sugar aspects and are delicious but few slices can compare to one that is layered and within those layers lies a gooey caramel centre.

In the flurry of all these new slices that Mum and I have been finding recipes for I forgot about my old favourite, my turn to, my staple to impress. I am blaming my Christmas bakewell and birdseed slice for this.

Rewind back to last January and I was making this caramel oaty slice as well as my lemon krummeltorte slice at least once a week to take to friends places or as thank yous to people for letting me stay at their houses over the holidays.

I made this slice for my brother to take as a thank you for his friend Drew's parents for letting him stay a couple of nights in Tairua with them. It was this or the brownie and I was not in the mood to battle with sticky chocolatey brownie mixture.

Its pretty easy, in fact it is very difficult to get wrong unless you burn it (ok which I sort of did) or burn the caramel.

Don't let me fool you, this isn't fiddly, candy thermometer requiring caramel. This is can of condensed milk + butter + golden syrup + saucepan caramel. Easy as. Unless your tin of condensed milk decides it wants to be far runnier than usual leaving you confused and wondering whether or not it will thicken to produce a delicious caramel.

Perseverance and sheer laziness to go down to the shops and buy a new tin paid off. The caramel thickened and the day was saved.

This slice requires three components; the oath base, the caramel filling and the coconut topping.

Usually when I see things that have components I flick the page and look for something less ingredient hungry.

But this slice is different. And well worth it.

I chose to cook my base slightly longer than it says too, this made it really nice and crunchy. If you are into more cakey slices with a softer base then only cook it for ten minutes. The end result is still delicious.

Caramel Oat Bars
Source of this glorious creation completely unknown
Makes a thin 20x30cm slice

Base:
100g butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup flour
1/2 cup desiccated coconut
1/2 cup rolled oats

Caramel:
395g tin of full fat, full sugar condensed milk
50g butter
2 tablespoons golden syrup

Topping:
1 cup threaded coconut
1/2 cup rolled oats
50g butter
1 tablespoon golden syrup

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees on bake and line a 20x30cm (or smaller) baking tin with baking paper.

Cream together the butter, sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy. Sieve in the flour the mix then add in the oats and the coconut.

Press firmly into the base of the lined tin and then bake for 10 (soft) to 15 (crunchier) minutes. Once baked, remove to cool while you make the caramel.

Place all the caramel ingredients into a saucepan and stir over a low to medium heat until the contents has turned a dark golden colour and has thickened. This should take 3 - 5 minutes.

Spread the caramel over the base.

To make the topping, place the butter and golden syrup in a saucepan and melt together. Add in the coconut and oats and stir until well coated.

Sprinkle the topping over the caramel and base.

Bake in the oven for a further 10-15 minutes or until the topping has turned crisp and golden in colour.

Once cold, cut into bars or squares.

Enjoy!

ANZAC Biscuits

Good ANZAC day morning to you,

On this day of remembrance where we have all been up since 5am at dawn services, by the time 10am comes around we are all quite keen for a nice big cup of tea and an ANZAC bickie.

Now these biscuits were sent to soldiers on the front line by the women back home during World War 1. They were sent because due to the high sugar content acting as a preservative. However they contain a high amount of butter which went rancid by the time they got to their men. So yes they were safe to eat but not so tasty after a couple of months of postage. However there is no chance of even seeing how long these ones will last in the pantry for as I know for a fact that Alix and Lucy shall gobble them up before they even have time to make a cup of tea to go with them.

Now my Mum says I am the better biscuit maker between her and I. I however disagree, ANZAC biscuits are the one biscuit that seems to fall apart on me. Mum's are far better, they are big, fat and chewy. Maybe perhaps because I eat half the mixture before it can even make it to a ball on the baking tray. Anyway I use the Edmonds Cookbook recipe but use 120g of butter rather than 100g. It makes them more moist and less likely to fall apart.

Edmonds Cookery Book ANZAC biscuits (modified slightly)

Makes 12

120g butter
1 tablespoon golden syrup
125g flour
150g sugar
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup desiccated or threaded coconut (threaded looks a bit fancier for those looking to impress)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
2 tablespoons boiling water


Method:

Preheat the oven to bake at 180 degrees.

In a saucepan, melt together the butter and golden syrup.

Sieve your flour, mix together with your sugar, coconut and oats.

In a small bowl (a mug or a small measuring cup will do) mix together your baking soda and just boiled water. Quickly add this to the hot butter and golden syrup mixture in the saucepan, stirring as you add. It will foam up.

Once the butter has foamed up all it can, pour this into the dry ingredients. Stir to combine with a spoon.

Roll ping pong ball sized balls of mixture and place onto a baking tray lined with baking paper. Flatten the balls gently with a fork.

Bake at 180 degrees for 15 minutes or until golden brown. You may find the back row brown faster than the front row due to your oven. If this is the case just turn your tray around halfway though.

Leave to cool once out of the oven so that they firm up.

Make yourself a cup of tea an enjoy!

Have a good day!

Oaty White Chocolate Chippies

Hello!

Like most of my posts, they come in twos. First it was oaty ginger slice now oaty chocolate chip cookies. I am certainly having a good day with the oats. Oats are good, they bulk things out and give something an ANZAC bickie feel. Hmm yum. These cookies are a cross between good old chocolate chips and ANZAC biscuits. Bringing the goodness of chocolate and the deliciousness of oats all rolled into one. Mum requested a batch of biscuits made up as Jack has restarted school again. He is now 7th form and still doesn't make his lunch so I had to make the baking component up for him. What is good about these is that because of the oats and coconut added to them the mixture gets bulked out a huge amount and so it ends up making 35-40 cookies depending on their size and the amount of mixture consumed.

Ok so you will need:

Oaty Chocolate Chip Cookies:
200g softened butter
2 cups brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups quick cooking rolled oats
3/4 cup desccicated or threaded coconut
1/2-1 cup chocolate chips (I prefer white)

Before you get going, preheat your oven to 170 degrees on bake.

Cream together your butter and sugar until nice and light brown and fluffy. Chris said he would help but I think he meant help with the eating rather than beating. He gave up very shortly after this photo was taken. He does not look too impressed.

Next beat in the vanilla and one of the two eggs.

Once the first egg is in and roughly mixed in, add the second. Continue beating until the volume of the mixture roughly doubles. The more volume you produce now, the more mixture there will be at the end for cookie rolling.

Next sieve in your flour, baking powder and baking soda.

Then add your two cups of oats and 3/4 cup of coconut. Mix carefully so that it doesn't go everywhere.

And next add the most important ingredient.

Chop the melts roughly, making them more manageable in the mixture.

Now once you've got it looking like this, grab a soup spoon and lightly flour your hands and roll soup spoon sized dollops into balls. Then place the balls on a baking tray lined with baking paper.

Now bake these for exactly 10 minutes and they should come out looking really rather tasty. Unless your oven is screwy.

 et voila!

Transfer to a cooling rack a few minutes after removing from the oven. Once a tiny bit cooler they taste so good. Slightly crisp on the outside but gooey on the inside. mmmm.

Like I said, this recipe made 38 cookies. That is a fair few school lunches!

So there you go. One of my favourite cookie recipes.

See you later!

Bye!

Oaty Ginger Slice

 Hello!

So today I am blogging about my Mum's most recent delicious discovery that is Ripe Deli's Oaty Ginger Slice. Once again it was recommended by the wonderful Sue. I blame Sue for many ingested calories over the last few years. She should probably stop giving Mum all these recipes, but then again maybe not. Anyway Mum loves ginger crunch and originally I thought this was a ginger crunch recipe but it turned out to be an oat slice crossed with ginger crunch. Which is excellent. I love oats. Especially when they are in ANZAC biscuits.

Hmm isn't that delicious looking? Unfortunately I didn't have a camera on me at the time of the slicing so I had to make do with my good old trusty phone :)

Ok here goes Ripe's Oaty Ginger Slice as told by the Ripe Deli cookbook . . .


Oaty Ginger Slice

Base:
200g unsalted butter
3 tablespoons golden syrup
1 cup soft brown sugar
1 cup desiccated coconut
2 cups rolled oats
1 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground ginger

Topping (I doubled the recipe):
1 cup icing sugar
75g unsalted butter
2 tablespoons golden syrup
1 tablespoon ground ginger

You will also need a good trusty slice tin approx 20x30cm in size and a big chunky knife to cut it once set. A flimsy butter knife won't cut the mustard. Or in this case a very chunky solid base.

So first up, preheat your oven to bake at 170 degrees.

 So my friends, the next first thing you will want to do is to pop your base butter in a saucepan and heat until metled.

Next add the brown sugar and golden syrup and stir over a low to medium heat until all the sugar has dissolved.

Oh yeah a trick with golden syrup if your Mum hasn't already taught you is to pour boiling water over the spoon you plan to use before dipping it in the syrup. The heat melts the syrup making measurements more accurate, the syrup more pourable and less gets stuck to the spoon.

In a separate bowl mix all your other ingredients together such as your flour, oats, coconut, baking powder and ginger. Mix until evenly distributed.

 Pour your hot butter mixture over the top of your dries (just like in ANZAC biscuit making) and stir until well combined.

Once all nicely mixed, line your slice tin with baking paper like so.

And proceed to mold the base mixture to the base of the tin, making sure it is nice and even and goes right to the corners.

I find using the bottom of a half or full cup measure works really well to flatten the base evenly. This base is quite greasy so you don't need to flour the cup but for more doughy bases dip the cup's base in flour to stop it from sticking.

Sweet we are now ready for the oven. 20 minutes at 170 degrees.

Now this base looks quite dark in the next few photos, almost over done. But I have found that it needs to be cooked until that colour for the base to be crunchy enough to carry the soft, smooth topping. It's all about preferences. I love really hard crunchy ginger nuts but my Dad can't stand them so of course I want mine to be as crunchy as possible. Make sure you leave this to cool before pouring on the topping.

So now for the topping. It's dead easy. Like I said up the top, I make a double recipe, Mum does a one and a half. It doesn't really matter. One and a half is for people who arn't as fatty as myself but is more than sufficient.

In your trusty saucepan, melt your butter and then add your icing sugar, ginger and golden syrup.

Stir stir stir until it is all melted and smoother than the inside of Chris' thigh. Not joking about that either. Women would kill for such sparse thigh hair growth. TMI? Yeah thought so too. Anyway the idea is that you want it molten and smooth.

So that when you pour it, it looks like this.

Tilt the tray around to spread it around the base.

Oh doesn't that look good?

Leave to cool for a few hours on the kitchen bench. Our first batch was cooled in the fridge. Mum seems to think the fridge made it soft. Once all nice and set take to it with that big knife of yours and cut it up into delectable wee pieces. Did you know they say ginger is a natural blood thinner and can help to ease cramping when you get your monthly bill? What an excellent excuse to eat lots of this at a time when you are already feeling fat, bloated, cranky and sore! haha.

Ok time for me to right up the oaty cookies that I made simultaneously :)

See you soon!