Oatmeal Biscuits - An Heirloom Recipe Series

An Easy Comforting Biscuit - Extra Food Chat with Kath

Welcome to another edition of Extra Food Chat with Kath!

These Oatmeal Biscuits were a regular feature in Grandma’s kitchen. They are easy to make, and I can’t think of anyone in my family who didn’t like them.

I copied the recipe down when I was 10 or 11, and I copied it down without adding the 1/2 tsp cinnamon that is listed in Grandma’s handwritten version pictured here. I can’t recall if that was a mistake or a deliberate omission (at the time the idea of cinnamon would have put me off making or eating these!), however making them sans cinnamon is how I’ve made them ever since.

It was only after Grandma’s death I found the handwritten recipe card for this recipe (pictured in this post). It was tucked in between the pages of her 1990s copy of Delia Smith’s book ‘Complete Cookery Course’ that I realised I hadn’t copied down the recipe quite right originally.

I don’t think this was even the recipe card I had copied the recipe off all those years ago. I remember one school holidays, being given a notebook and my Grandma telling me it was for me to write down recipes. I got out her recipe card index box from the pantry and wrote out the recipes I wanted. The cards in this box had been rewritten out by her daughter many years before (possibly another school holiday activity!), so the handwriting was very neat and not in cursive like Grandma’s writing.

When Grandma died, I left that recipe card index in the pantry, hoping my cousin would take it/get it since it was her mother who had rewritten all the recipes. I was fortunate to find another copy of this recipe a couple of years later in the Delia Smith cookbook, written out by Grandma. I still don’t know if my cousin, or anyone else, took the recipe card index or if it ended up in the bin.

It is interesting to me that this recipe is called ‘cookies’ by Grandma and not biscuits. I don’t know where she got this recipe originally, but it has a decidedly American feel to it to me. Not just because no one would have called these biscuits ‘cookies’ in Australia at the time, but we also don’t use the word ‘oatmeal’ much either.

Porridge is more commonly used in Australia to describe the breakfast of soaked oats, which I assume the name of this recipe refers. Porridge biscuits don’t really have the same ring to them at all though! So I keep the oatmeal and call them biscuits, as I have decided I don’t need to call all biscuits cookies when they can just be called biscuits as is the Australian way.

I have heard these biscuits work well with added choc chips or sultanas, but I have only ever made them this way (sans cinnamon) as Grandma always did. There is nothing that needs changing here, no improvement needed as far as I am concerned (and I am of course on this topic especially biased! So feel free to add if you like).

The only ingredient change I have ever done is make them with margarine rather than butter, which works well, you will just end up with a slightly less flat more lumpy looking biscuit.

The recipe for these Oatmeal Biscuits is below for paid subscribers.

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