Scotch Crispies

My goodness the last time I made these sweet treats must have been around 20 years ago! I discovered them in an old Sri Lankan exercise book of mine. And just to prove how old this book is, it has 120 pages and cost just 15 rupees! Now what can you buy for 15 rupees nowadays? A Dot toffee maybe???

I picked to make these because I needed to put together something simple and quick to take to a friends place for tea and I was not in a cake mood. Turned out to be a good idea because my kids really like these things (and they are not too unhealthy).

Makes 16 to 20 pieces; Preparation time 1 hour (15 mixing, 45 baking)

Ingredients:

2 oz	Self-raising flour
or
2 oz Plain flour + 1/2 tsp baking powder
8 oz	Rolled oats
1/4 tsp.	Salt
1/2 tsp.	Baking soda
4 oz	Butter (or margarine)
4 tbsp.	Black treacle
2 oz	Sugar

Method:

Set your oven to 150 C (300 F).

This is an easy peasy recipe. It's great if you have a little cook in the house. My little cooks were all occupied making loom bands for their aunts, uncles and cousins for Christmas. Not a bad thing, they have a list of over 20 people, it's going to take a while!

So my first step was to put a pan on the cooker and drop in the butter, "black treacle" and sugar. So the "black treacle" makes this sweet a very Scottish thing but I'm not going for Scottish, I'm going for "unique"! That means instead of 4 tbsp. of Scottish stuff I put in 2 tbsp. of Goldsaft (some kind of fruit molasses) and 2 tbsp. of Kittul Pani (Sri Lankan honey from the Kittul tree). I know I've made it with 100% Sri Lankan honey and I'm guessing bees honey would work too. You just have to figure out how you want it to taste. The Goldsaft is nice and dark but it is way too strong for my taste that's why I only used half the amount and made up the rest with the Sri Lankan treacle.

Impatiently I put my cooker on high heat until the butter was melted (I stirred it all the time) and then reduced the heat to medium to dissolve the sugar. I kept stirring the thing so that the sugar dissolved quicker and because I was worried that the butter might burn. This step doesn't take too long and it's not an exact science so if the sugar does not dissolve 100% don't worry too much.

I took it off the heat and set it aside. My recipe says to let it cool but I don't have too much patience for that. At least I let it stand while I mixed the other ingredients. Actually that would be all of the other ingredients: I measured them all out into one big bowl and then stirred them up.

Since I was supposed to let the butter/sugar mixture cool I took the time to line my baking sheet with parchment paper. You could also butter the tin. As per my recipe I used a 9" by 11" tin. Turns out that I really should have used an 8" by 8" but it wasn't too tragic as you will see in a bit.

Next I dumped the flour/oat mixture into the butter/sugar pan and stirred it until it was well combined. Then this went into the baking tray.

Now you could use the back of a spoon to press the mixture into the pan but a clean hand works much better. The result is a nicely compressed crispy!

The thing went in the oven for 45 minutes. As soon as it comes out cut it into pieces. Later it will be too hard. Then let it cool.

Okay it can be, and was, eaten hot but then it is not crunchy. Let it cool before storing it else it will get soggy. And then enjoy with a hot cup of tea!

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