Directions: |
Directions:Combine the oatmeal, salt and baking soda. Mix thoroughly. Melt the butter and add. Stir enough hot water into the mixture to make a stiff dough. Turn out the dough onto a board sprinkled with oatmeal. Divide the dough in two. Take one half and knead lightly. Roll out to about ¼ inch thickness and cut in four pie-shaped wedges or quarters. In Scotland the quarters are called “farls.”
GRIDDLE: Bake farls on a very lightly buttered iron griddle or heavy aluminum pan. Keep the heat low. The oatcakes will be ready when they curl up at the edges. Do not turn them. The color remains essentially the same, perhaps becoming a little deeper. Repeat with the other half of the dough.
OVEN: These oatcakes can also be baked in the oven on a lightly buttered cookie sheet at 325°F for about 30 minutes. |
Personal
Notes: |
Personal
Notes: Sara Walker tells us, in Sara Walker’s Highland Fling Cookbook , that these cakes were called “bannocks” – flat thin cakes ,made from almost nothing but plain oatmeal. They were eaten with lots of butter and sometimes with cheese or jelly and were washed down with strong, sweet tea. For breakfast, I eat them with cottage cheese and raspberry all-fruit jelly; for lunch, with soup or a salad.
I’ve never found the kind of Scottish fine-cut oatmeal Sara refers to, not even the “Scottish Oatmeal” in health food stores. According to Sara, though, old-fashioned rolled oats, not instant, put in a blender at the lowest speed for about a minute should yield a consistency that’s equal to the original Scottish version
I hope you enjoy the sweet, nutty oat flavor of these as much as I do!
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This recipe for ETTRICK TRADITIONAL OATCAKES is from