1 1/2 cups *oatbran(or oat and rice bran)
1 cup ghee
1 cup ground almonds
1 cup mixed nuts/seeds, roughly chopped
mixed spice
1 tsp vanilla
'some' rice milk(you'll know when it's enough!)

Melt the butter, then stir in all other ingredients. Add a little milk(about a cup at first) and as it gets absorbed, keep adding more until you have a very thick porridge.

Spread the porrige into a baking dish/pan and cook at 150c for about 40 mins or unti golgen and firm. Cut into squares and leave in pan until cool.

Absolutely yum! and do you know - you won't have any prob eating the lot(like I do with some of the delish recipes on here), cos 1 is sooo enough, and there are NO grains in sight, hurray!! These are great for breakfast on the run!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Linda,

This sounds delicious, thank you!

A question unrelated to the recipe:

Buttercup, I note that you are in New Zealand. I am in Australia. I was wondering if you have been able to find anything such as WonderCocoa or vegetable glycerine Down Under, that I have seen mentioned in many recipes on this site? I am having a hard time finding both of these.

Thanks for any help you can give.

Both of the stores where I have bought vegetable glycerine have had it in the "beauty" aisle. Just make sure there are no other ingredients and it is food-grade. Good luck!
Susan

Thanks Peaceful.

What kind of stores did you buy it at? Health stores?

Hi Meredith

NO! you can't find either anywhere in NZ! In fact, NZ has such a small population that a lot of things are hard to get here - there just isn't the choice! When I ask at the health food store about it I usually get a blank look However, I seem to manage all right without so far. Unless it's used specifically for its liquid qualities in a recipe, I just use stevia and a little rice milk instead. Hope this helps!

xsamx

Thanks Buttercup.

When you make the Stevia and rice milk mixture, what kind of amounts do you use, or what kind of consistency do you look for?

Hi meredith

I don't put stevia in mine - I find the almonds and rice milk make it quite sweet enough for me - maybe I'm losing my sweet tooth nooo, can't be, can it???

I just keep on adding the milk in smallish amounts until the oatbran seems cooked(in the same way as porridge) and the mixture is thick - you could get some on a spoon and it wouldn't fall off straight away if held upside down. The oatbran maybe needs to be simmered for 10 or so mins...also you can use half water/milk if you want less of a limit.

I made some yesterday, and used LSA (linseed,sunflower,almond ground mix) instaed of the nuts and put in a handful of cranberries - the frozen ones - and it was lush! Had some for brekkie this morning and was full till lunch, which makes a change!

also, you can make this a bit thinner, and just eat it as porridge if you want some thing warming on a cold day.

Hope that helps!

xsamx

Sam-

I made these tonight.

I (and my tummy) are VERY happy!!!! These were great with the cranberries.

Thanks!

I believe (I love food!)

glad you liked it - it would be really nice for you guys now you are getting towards winter - brrrr! I give them to my child for lunch instead of the shop 'muesli' bars...they are sooo bad for you! They are full of sugar and all sorts of rubbish! Even the 'healthier' ones seem to have glucose syrup and goodness knows what else!

A variation of this is to make the oatbran mixture and, bake it for half the time, and then top with the following topping;

Put some frozen berries in a pan with a tiny amount of water, and heat slowly until defrosted... add stevia to taste and arrowroot powder until it forms a thick paste-y type substance. Then spread it ontop of the squares and sprinkle coconut thread on top, and finish baking. This would also work with Helen's lemon curd recipe if you cannot have berries yet

Hi Sam

Great recipe. If you can't have oatbran, would this work with quinoa or millet flakes? I don't know what oatbran looks like - is it flaky like these?

Thanks

Helen

Hi Meredith

We can't get Wondercocoa in the UK either. When I see a recipe with it in, I just use carob powder instead, but less of it (like in Tia's chocolate brownie recipe)

Helen

Oatbran looks like small porridge flakes, and behaves in a similar way, though without the glutinousness (I'm sure that's not really a word...) to normal oat porridge. I don't know if quinoa or millet might work the same or not...they don't tend to absorb quite so much water and seem less 'springy' when cooked...maybe if you made them thinner it would work?

cheers

samxx

Thanks, Sam

I've noticed you seem to know a lot about the way food works - do you by any chance work with food? Also, where do you come from in the UK? My husband loves Australia, but I've never been. He thinks New Zealand would be better for me because of the more temperate climate. How do you find it?

Helen

Hey Helen,

just noticed this from December...I feel so rude!

Anyway, I used to work in the catering industry for many years (believe me all that wheat based food and baking etc did me NO good whatsoever!), but now just experiment really.
I moved to NZ from Bristol just over 3 years ago, and New Zealand is lovely! Up north can get pretty hot, but wellington (where I live) is very wet and windy. There is a lot of mould in the houses in Wellington - not good! Apparently a lot of immigrants to NZ develop allergic rhinitus and/or asthma because of the high pollen levels here(cos it's so green). Asthma like symptoms were one of my first food allergy symptoms, but the drs wouldn;t have it and had me on an inhaler for a few months - when I found this place SO many things slotted into place, and I ditched the inhaler and have never looked back with that particular thing

Anyway, it's a beautiful place, but I still get homesick..don't think I could move back home though...we'll see

Whereabouts are you from Helen? I think I remember you suffering from mould related stuff? It's a nightmare isn't it??!

xsamx

Hi Sam

Nice to hear from you.

It doesn't matter that you missed my message. I didn't exactly put it in a place you might look.

That's interesting what you say about the asthma/inhaler thing. When I lived in a flat in London with mould problems, I had breathing problems, a couple of nasty chest infections, plus a whole range of other seemingly minor or a bit more major illenesses (from eye infections to unknown viral infections). The pollution in London also used to give me breathing problems.

Since I moved away from there, I have had no breathing problems, although when I went to stay with my Dad for a month to look after him when he came out of hospital, they came back and I was on the inhaler again. Must be the mould, or a combination of mould and dust in the case of his house. I read in an allergy book that you can tolerate quite large levels of dust, but when the dust becomes mixed with mould, that's when a sensitive person will react. I only dust my house every 2 weeks now and that never causes me any problems.

I come from Watford down south, but now I live in Skelmersdale in the North West. It's between Liverpool and Manchester. The cold takes some getting used to but with global warming, the temperature seems to be rising and we haven't had a cold winter so far at all.

I think I would get homesick if I moved abroad. I did spend 5 months in Pakistan, but that's such an extreme change of culture, it's no wonder I didn't adjust well!

Best wishes

Helen

I tried this recipe with coconut milk instead of rice milk. It fell apart but that's probably because I didnt use enough liquid- or does the rice milk make it stay together (I'm assumign that would be due to some residual starch)?

Again, I might just not have used enough liquid for it to fully penetrate the bran/dry ingredients.

Hey Maria-
I've tried rice milk with this recipe and can't get mine to stay together either. I use this recipe but make it more into a granola. So I stir it while it's in the over so it all gets cooked evenly. Some pieces stay together, but most fall apart like granola. Sorry that doesn't help your problem, but maybe you can try granola instead

maybe you could experiment with a binder - like flax gel, tapioca flour, arrowroot powder, or one of the gums...

Well, the easy one would be egg or egg white, but of course not everyone can eat eggs.

One question I had with this is, are we aiming for some kind of English/Aussie oat cake recipe here? IS there such a thing as traditional oat cakes? Here in San Francisco we have a local company that makes oat cakes out of oatmeal and dried fruit and fruit juice- very yummy, though they keep changing the name because they don't sound very appealing (we used to call them Hockey Pucks). I think they're currently called HeartThrive. Anyway I was wondering whether there's a traditional oat cake thing that this recipe (and the other oat cake recipe in this forum) is trying to replicate for the Brits, or are we just making up new snacks with no pre-established rules? And if there is a traditional food we're aiming for, what's normally in it?


Maria

Hi guys

I think the key to getting this to stay together is to make sure you add enough liquid. I didn't qualify the exact amount because it has always seemed so variable when I have made them. You have to add the milk while the mixture is still over heat, as this will keep the milk absorbing into the oatbran etc. When it has reached a very thick porrige consistency but doesn't seem to be getting much thicker, it is ready.

Also, this is very different to the oatbran squares recipe, which should be very thin and crisp. These should be about an inch to an inch and a half deep. You really shouldn't need to use egg or any other thickener to get them to stay solid... other than that, I can't think what could be wrong...

They are a bit like flapjacks (although people from the US might think I mean a sort of pancake when I say that ) people from the UK will know what I mean! A flapjack recipe is basically oats, butter and golden syrup (corn syrup) - so obviously there is not a lot of scope there for substitution!!
Good luck

Samxxx