Daring Bakers’ July 2012 Challenge: Going Crackers!

Apologies to the Daring Bakers... I'm a day late in posting this as I got a little distracted by the Olympic opening ceremony last night. I wasn't planning on watching it, then logged in to Facebook and saw lots of peoples' status updates along the lines of "OMG The Queen". Being prone to pessimism, I immediately thought that with some monumentally bad timing, she had taken ill, or worse, keeled over and died. So I quickly flicked over to the BBC news and instead discovered that she was alive and well, and all the excitement was over her appearance with Mr 007 Bond himself in a film as part of the Olympic opening ceremony, and so I was duly sucked in!

Excuses over - back to the baking...

Our July 2012 Daring Bakers' Host was Dana McFarland and she challenged us to make homemade crackers! Dana showed us some techniques for making crackers and encouraged to use our creativity to make each cracker our own by using ingredients we love.

Oatcakes a la Mini-M

This was Mini-M's first Daring Bakers' challenge participation - aged not quite two!

We went with making some traditional Scottish oatcakes, the native crackers to our part of the world. They're quick, easy and cheap. Oh and as Mini-M quickly discovered, the dough is lots of fun to play with - like bake-able, edible play dough.

Scottish Oatcakes (makes 20 or so depending on size)

250g oatmeal (mine was medium cut)
170ml boiling water
1 tbsp olive oil
Pinch salt
Pinch bicarbonate of soda

Preheat the oven to 180C (160C fan).
Weigh out the oatmeal into a mixing bowl, add the salt and bicarb and give a quick mix.
Then add the oil and freshly boiled water and mix well until combined. It will probably seem a bit too wet at this point, but don't add any more oatmeal just yet.
Let the mixture sit for 15 minutes for the oatmeal to soak up the water.
After 15 mins, work in a little more oatmeal or a tbsp more water if needed to get a firm but workable consistency.
Sprinkle a little more oatmeal onto the worktop, then roll out to about 0.5cm thick - or even thinner and cut out. Or if you want to get a little more squishy with the dough like Mini-M did, take heaped tsps, roll into marble sized balls and squash flat - much more fun!
Put onto lightly greased baking trays, and bake for about 15-20 mins until crisp.
Because there's no sugar and so little fats in them they don't really change colour, so don't try to cook until golden!