Cookin' Oatcakes!

I love getting out into the woods, sleeping in a hammock under the stars, man you have never seen anything so beautiful as stars at midnight twinkling through the leaves above your head as you gently rock to sleep... sigh. The problem with Winter is that it makes your nose cold, other body parts getting cold, not a problem but can I fall asleep with a cold nose, not if my life depended on it. I don't sleep out during Winter and I miss it.

In March / April (I think) this year I went out with a few good friends to spend a weekend in the woods, one of them, Bodge, who hails from Staffordshire brought some really yummy pancakes things with him for breakfast, he called them oatcakes and proceeded to fill them with bacon, fried mushroom and cheese, wrapping them up like a tortilla and then baking them for a few min's on a skillet to crisp up the outside and melt the cheese!.
WOW you have never tasted anything so divine in your life. They were food of the gods.  Once I got home and went shopping, the oatcakes that were for sale were hard, gritty things that tasted little better than cardboard. All of us from the meet were pestering Bodge for a recipe but apparently the various recipes are particularly guarded and steeped in secrecy.  However a few months of almost consistent pestering he relented with a generic recipe!

I just had to make some, like I said the ones around here are NOT real oatcakes at all!

I've labeled the picture for your health. They are just like making pancakes.
Yes, I do light my Kitchen with a candle. The main light has been repaired over and over again and it keeps blowing the circuit. I use a candle now :)

 

MY OATCAKE RECIPE (Original thread on BCUK)

10oz Medium Coarse Oatmeal
6oz Plain Flour
2tsp Dried Yeast
1tp Sugar
½pt Full Fat (blue top) Milk
1pt Warm water

Mix all of the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl (sift the flour). Make a well in the center and add the milk and water to make a thin batter. If you need to add more water, making sure it is warm. Once the mixture is the consistency of thin cream cover the bowl with a damp tea towel and put it into the airing cupboard or a warm place for about an hour and a half.

Once the time is up, take the bowl out and mix it again. If it has thickened up, add more milk (not water, the water will cause the oatcake to stick while cooking. The fat in the milk helps prevent this) until the thin cream consistency has been re-achieved!

Make an oil pad from a dish of oil, kitchen towel and a pair of tongs. Get a frying pan or a skillet, make sure it is non-stick. Heat it on the cooker until it is nice and hot, swish the oil pad around a couple of times and add about a ¼ of a cup of batter mix, you will have to experiment with quantities, but you are looking for a oatcake that's about a millimeter thick with holes coming through it.

Cook it on one side until the crackling noise stops then flip it over, pancake style or by using a spatula.
Once you have it cooked, put on a cooling rack to cool, try not to over lap hot ones, they stick together >.<

 

Make as many as you can, fry some bacon and mushrooms, slice a thin bit of cheese wrap it up in an oatcake, tortilla style and then cook for a couple of min's on the frying pan or under the grill... Enjoy!

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