Cynthia has declared, much to my dismay, that I am the baker in the house. Naturally, not long after declaring this, she pointed to a recipe and declared that I would cook her those! The recipe in question was “Oaty walnut and cheese biscuits” from Gordon Ramsay’s Healthy Appetite (pg 19) (Amazon.ca
I won’t lie to you, these were not a simple undertaking (especially since I was preparing them before my morning coffee), but they were totally worth it.
Gordon Ramsay’s breakfast biscuits awaiting their baking.
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 cups self rising flour (1 cup all purpose flour, 1 1/2 cup strong white flour, 1 tsp baking soda)
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- Pinch of cayenne pepper
- 4 tbsp butter
- 1 3/4 cup rolled oats
- 1 cup grated sharp cheddar (we used cheap “old cheddar”)
- 2/3 cup chopped walnuts
- 2 beaten large eggs
- 9 tbsp butter milk (~135ml of 2% milk, a bit under 1 tbsp lemon juice)
Stir together the flour, baking powder, salt, and cayenne. Dice the butter and then “rub it into the flour mix using your fingertips until it resembles crumbs”. Stir in the rolled oats, cheese, and walnuts. Make a well in the centre and add in eggs and milk. Mix until it forms a dough, adding milk as required (we needed to add a fair bit of extra milk, we just used 2% for this). Roll out the dough on a floured board (the dough wasn’t very sticky, and we over floured the cutting board) to 1 inch thick. Use a glass to cut out biscuits. place on an oiled baking sheet. Brush the tops with milk and sprinkle a bit of oats on each. Bake for 15 – 20 minutes at 350F until golden brown. (Ours took closer to 1/2 hour, and we had to bump up the temperature to 365F to get them to brown).
Golden brown and oh so tasty.
Slice and spread some fresh margarine while still warm, and these make an utterly fantastic breakfast. The one change I’d make from what we did was to use a stronger cheese. The recipe called for a sharp cheddar, and we used Cracker Barrel old cheddar (it was cheap). Next time I will make a point of using real sharp cheddar (maybe a proper 2 year old from one of the local makers).