Celebrating Burns Night with Caitlin Carrick Varty, featuring a simple recipe that pays homage to Scotland’s beloved oat.
A Bake for Burns Night
Date, Orange and Oat Bars
What better way to celebrate climbing to the end of January than by making a sweet recipe with health benefits? This is my thinking. That, and I won’t let Burns Night go by without making something with oats or haggis. I first found a version of this recipe in a cookbook titled Porridge. Oats and Their Many Health Benefits by Margaret Briggs. It’s one in a range of my cookbook collection that never ever fails to deliver. I’ve tweaked Briggs’ original slightly – mostly to up the orange, and for the mix to bake perfectly in the Falcon Square Bake Tray.
Ingredients:
- 230g dates, pitted
- 2 large sweet oranges - Navel oranges are perfect for this
- 60g water
- 200g unsalted butter at room temperature, plus extra for greasing
- 200g oats
- 200g plain flour
- 35g/1 heaping dessert spoon honey
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
Grease a Falcon Square Bake Tray generously with butter. Preheat the oven to 180/160 fan.
Roughly chop the dates and add to a saucepan. Zest the two oranges onto the dates. Cut off the pith from both oranges to reveal the fruit. Finely chop one orange and add it to the dates along with the water. Eat the other orange as you work (I did claim ‘health benefits’). Heat the dates on medium heat, with the lid on, for 8-10 minutes. Stir the pot occasionally and remove from the heat when the dates have broken down to a paste.
In a large bowl, rub the butter into the oats and flour. Add the honey and vanilla extract. Use your hands to squash the mixture into a shaggy mass, then tip the lot out on the worktop and knead into a dough. When the dough is formed, press half of it as evenly as you can into the base of the Bake Tray.
Spread the date paste over the base dough. Dot the remaining half ofdough over the date layer; the best way to do this is by pressing pieces of dough betweenthumb and forefinger and laying them down like mosaic pieces. Bake for 25 minutes, then slice into bars.
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