Wow, finally writing a new blog post. I've almost forgotten how to blog!
If you're wondering why I'm so absent, well, there just aren't enough days in my week. I'm in the gym three evenings during the week, and then again once or twice at the weekend. The rest of my weekends are taken up with paid foodie work. I'm not complaining! I love the work I do! I mean, getting paid to make food and take pictures of it. C'mon! That's just awesome! But, it does mean than I really don't have a lot of blog time left. Well, certainly not the way that I blog.
When I decide to write something for my site it can take two to three days of work per recipe. More, sometimes. With the shite light we have in Ireland I'm at the mercy of the weather for daylight. Yes, I do have lights that I can use, but it's just a pain in the DOMS afflicted ass to set them up in the kitchen, then move them again to take my set up shots in my "studio".
And, of course, I don't make it easy on myself. I like taking process shots, and that means what should take me twenty to thirty minutes of hands on baking or cooking, can take a couple of hours. That's before I head to the "studio" to take the final shots. Then it's sifting through all the shots, editing, and the writing.
The writing, that's a whole other process that can take anywhere between ten minutes to hours, spanned over days. It depends on the inspiration!
So, the plan is to simplify. At least for the moment. I have so many ideas and recipes that I want to post, but the daunting task puts me off. Yes, blogging is a lot of work! Anyway, for the sake of getting the content flowing again, you might notice my posts are going to become the way I am working to be one day, leaner!
I might not have a nice long post to read through or loads of photos with various angles and multiple setups. But, you will still get damned good recipes.
This recipe was great! I threw it together in about ten minutes, and only used about an extra five minutes to take some basic process shots. Boom!
So what's the deal with these crackers? They were inspired by Flahavan's Oats!
I received a parcel of Flahavan's goodies from their PR company a little while ago, and the basket of various oats have been staring at me for weeks waiting to be used.
Oats are one of my smart carb options so I've been looking for a few ideas to use them in. My first idea was to try porridge bread, it's trending everywhere at the moment, and I'll probably still give that a go. I mean, I miss bread! So, oat bread could be pretty awesome.
But I'm one to go against the grain (Haha! Geddit? Grain?!) so didn't want to do yet another porridge bread recipe just yet. I'm not sure how I decided on crackers, but that's obviously what I landed on.
Rosemary is one of my favourite herbs and I've always loved rosemary crackers. I think the flavour goes well with cheese, soups, even by themselves. So I went on a recipe search and came across these crackers.
I liked this recipe in particular because it doesn't have a recipe list five miles long like some "insert fad diet name here" that requires eight types of seeds, three variations of weird gummy shit, and the blessing from an Aztec monk, and who knows what else. No, this is my idea of a clean recipe, it's clean on content too! The only real work you'll have to do is to mill the oats in a processor to get a course flour which takes all of a minute or two. Other than that, it's bung everything in a bowl, mix. Roll out, bake, cut, bake again. EAT. And eat. And eat some more. They're so damned delicious! And, are strangely light, flaky and crumbly. Not what I was expecting from oat flour. The flaxseed provides the magic glue and the bonus of fibre. The rosemary and sea salt flakes? Well, that's just tonnes of flavour.
If you're avoiding gluten, remember to specifically get gluten free oats. It's not that oats aren't gluten free, it's that most often oats are processed in factories that also process wheat flour so there's cross contamination. So, just double check that before making these for anyone on a gluten free diet. (Incidentally, the Flahavan's I used are not gluten free.)
Okay, enough chat, get crackers! Er.... Cracking.
Rosemary Oat Crackers
Ingredients
| Recipe makes approx 20 (5cmx5cm) crackers Approx calories: 56 kcal per 1 cracker Approx macros: 4.4g Carbs | 3.8g Fat | 1.3g Protein per 1 cracker |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
| 130g | 4.5 oz | 1 cup | Oat Flour (simply mill oats in a food processor for 1-2 minutes) |
| 25g | 1 oz | ¼ cup | Ground Flax Seed |
| 1 tsbp | 1 tbsp | 1 tbsp | Fresh Rosemary, finely chopped, plus extra |
| 1½ tsp | 1½ tsp | 1½ tsp | Sea Salt Flakes, plus extra |
| 125ml | 4.5 fl oz | ½ cup | Water |
| 60ml | 2 fl oz | ¼ cup | Extra Virgin Olive Oil |
- Preheat oven to 150°C/130°C Fan/300°F/Gas 2 and line a large flat baking tray with parchment paper
- Combine all dry ingredients together in a large bowl (minus the extra rosemary and salt) and give a quick stir with a wooden spoon
- Add the wet ingredients and mix to combine
- Leave mixture to stand for between 5-10mins, the mixture will thicken up in this time
- Turn mixture out onto the lined baking tray and roughtly flatten it out with your hands, then roll out with a rolling pin until about 2mm thick
- Tip: If you don't have a rolling pin, you can use a straight sided bottle. I'd say a wine bottle, but you're on a diet, you don't drink wine, do you? ;)
- Tip: Try roll the mixture out in a large rectangular shape, it will be a lot easier to cut the crackers into neat squares this way
- Sprinkle the top with about 1 tsp extra chopped rosemary and a pinch of salt flakes. Run the rolling pin over the top lightly just to help the extra bits stick to the dough
- Bake in preheated oven for 30mins
- Remove from oven and use a sharp knife or pizza cutter to cut into about 20 squares
- Return to the oven and bake for further 25-30mins until crackers have dried out and are crisp
- Leave to cool on a wire rack, then gently remove from parchment paper
- Enjoy!
Recipe adapted from Baked: The Blog
Macros & kcals are for each 5cmx5cm square. You'll have to eyeball the not-so-square bits from around the sides to figure out if they're roughly the same values or not.
On that note, it's quite possible for you to get more neat crackers than just 20, it all depends on if you manage to roll it out in a very neat square which will mean less "wastage" around the sides from the offcuts. Not that those side bits should be wasted! Who cares if you get some wonky edged crackers? They're still gonna taste good!
Store crackers in an airtight container at room temperature. Should last for up to 3 months if container is completely airtight and no moisture is allowed to get in!
Recipe is easily doubled, tripled or quadrupled, so you can batch bake these easily. They make great hostess gifts!
Calories & Macros are rough estimates using MyFitnessPal, these numbers may vary depending on ingredient brands etc.
I am not a professional dietitian or in any way an expert on diet and health nutrition, these recipes are suited to my own personal eating plan and may or may not fit in with your own personal eating plan.
Please check with your own personal trainer / coach / doctor / dietitian / etc. to see if these recipes are suitable to you.
