Oat-y shortbread bites

It's been a strange kind of weekend for cooking. For a change, my savoury food has all turned out fairly badly (a made an adhoc couscous sund-dried tomato and mozarella bake, yesterday which I quite enjoyed but didn't quite taste right, and then today I attempted to make an afghan inspired stew but: I mis-judged the spices and it ended up tasting like curried aubergine, my okras got mistakenly thrown away and I hadn't soaked my split peas), but as a pleasant change, my shortbread experiment turned out pretty well.

I have been trying to perfect my brown butter shortbread recipe I have previously posted. As mentioned, I am happy with the taste, but they are incredibly crumbly (to the point of being pretty messy to just pick up), but my repeated attempts to adjust the ratios have been met with continued failure. I am sure that the problem is due to lack of water in the mix, but not able to get the balance right.

Anyway, this weekend, on the Saturday, I was out with the boys and we had some oat-y type shortbread biscuits with dried strawberry in a cafe, which were pretty tasty. So needless to say, when we got up this morning, I decided we should try to work out the recipe.

The first iteration was pretty decent - a little sweeter than I had in mind (I prefer more butter-y flavour in my shortbread) so I think next time I will try with more butter, and more flour to keep the structural integrity) but overall pretty decent.

I also substituted raisins for the strawberries on this occasion, on account of us having millions of raisins and no dried strawberries in the house. Anyway, to the details..

Ingredients

• 90 grams rolled oats
• 125 grams plain flour
• 100 grams caster
• 15 grams light brown sugar
• 180 grams unsalted butter
• raisins
• Pinch salt

Method

1. In a freestand mixer with paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugars until light
   
   
2. add the salt, raisins and oats and mix until combined
   
   
3. Add the flour and gently mix through - either on the lowest speed of the mixer or by hand
   
   
4. wrap in cling film and roll into a tube shaped about 1 inch in diameter (I was going for small, slightly bigger than bitesize biscuits) and cool in the fridge for 30 minutes until set
   
   
5. Pre-heat the oven to 160 degrees centigrade, slice the chilled batter into discs about 1/2 inch deep and place on baking tray line with baking paper, cook for about 15-20minutes untill golden brown