Cranberry Oat Cookies

I'm usually a very organised person. In my group of friends I'm always the one in charge of making Christmas dinner, responsible for organising outings, acting as travel agent for our group holidays, and generally making sure that things happen. However, I've managed to forget to take photos of the baked cookies. This is obviously not because I was too busy stuffing my face with them as soon as they came out of the oven, because I definitely saved all of the triple batch that I made to take into the office the next day. Obviously. Ahem. Anyway, this post is somewhat lacking a picture of the 'final product', so you're just going to have to take my word that they were golden brown and delicious. So there.

                        If you squint a little and tilt your head to the left, these will look like baked cookies. Honest.

Remember, because these biscuits are very oaty and have 'fruit' in them, you can pretty much pretend that they are healthy. Kinda. I did receive a minor complaint from a colleague who found them a little too healthy-tasting, as he'd been hoping for chocolate chip. Oh well...

Cranberry Oat Cookies
175g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
100g porridge oats
150g caster sugar (or golden caster sugar if you can get it)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
140g butter, chopped
100g dried cranberries (unsweetened, if possible)
1 egg, beaten


Sift together your flour and baking powder, then add your oats, sugar and cinnamon to the bowl. Mix well using your hands. 

Add in your butter and rub it into the mixture using your fingertips, until it has been completely incorporated into the mixture. It should be the texture of crumble-topping.

Stir in your cranberries and your egg, then mix well using a wooden spoon until it all comes together into a ball of dough. Lightly flour your work surface then turn the dough out and roll into a sausage-shape, about an inch wide (depending on how large you want your cookies to be).

Once you've rolled the dough into a log, wrap it in cling-film and chill it in the fridge until solid. At this point, you could also freeze your cookie dough for later; it should keep for about a month.

When you want to bake the cookies, pre-heat your oven to 160 degrees Celsius (on a fan oven). Unwrap the cookie-log and slice into inch-thick discs. Arrange them on a lined baking tray.

Bake for about 15 minutes (add on a few more minutes if baking from frozen), until the cookies are golden. Leave them on the tray to harden for a minute or so before moving them onto a wire rack to cool.

The recipe is really easy to double/triple, so you could easily make a bigger batch and then pop a log in the freezer, ready for any 'emergency' situations where you might need cookies. Enjoy!