Hazelnut oat biscuits with currant jelly

Yes, it's Christmas time...although...it's not quite there yet. It's (always surprising for me) in a few days the first Advent. It's high time to start baking cookies! That's why the current recipe of the week is a cookie recipe. And that alone is a small sensation, because we have never presented a sweet recipe here before.

The reason for this premiere is as follows: since we started selling the wonderful hazelnut butter made from the delicious roasted Piedmont hazelnuts, I've been wondering what the best thing to do with it is. Since I think some of you and you feel the same way, I have found a cookie recipe that I can use it with. And a recipe without a lot of kneading, weighing, sieving, chopping and above all without a long resting time (at least for the dough...). Oatmeal cookies of course! For me, they are traditionally part of the Advent season, but they do not contain cinnamon, so they seemed quite appropriate for the end of November.

The original recipe, which I found on the beautiful blog www.mynewroots.org (which, by the way, also has an incredibly simple recipe for wholemeal bread without flour and kneading ), is vegan and uses almond butter instead of hazelnut butter, coconut fat instead of butter and chia -Seed instead of egg. I took the liberty of enriching the recipe with our delicious butter, replacing the chia seeds with an egg and the almond butter with hazelnut butter. That's why I was a bit worried, because baking is known to be a kind of mysterious alchemy, where even the smallest modification can end in disaster. But lo and behold: everything worked out wonderfully. Even the raw dough tasted fantastic and, contrary to my fears after looking at the list of ingredients, not too sweet. After I managed to not nibble too much of it in order to finish baking at least a few cookies, the entire kitchen was soon filled with a wonderful nutty scent and thanks to the short baking time I was able to get the still warm result just a few minutes later finally try it. The cookies taste wonderful - nice and nutty, but neither too sweet nor too Christmassy. However, next time I would add a few chopped hazelnuts to the batter to enhance the nutty flavor, which is very subtle in this version.

Ingredients (for about 20 cookies):

• 4 tablespoons butter
• 4 tablespoons hazelnut butter (in the original recipe: almond butter)
• 75g cane sugar
• 1 egg
• 4 tbsp water + 2 tbsp maple syrup
• 1 tsp vanilla extract or concentrate
• 200g fine oat flakes
• 1 teaspoon Baking powder
• a pinch of salt
• Jam, marmalade or jelly according to taste, eg red currant jelly

Preparation:

1. Preheat the oven to 175°C
2. Mix the oat flakes well with the baking powder and salt.
3. In a large bowl, whisk together the butter and hazelnut butter until you get a creamy mixture. Add the sugar and vanilla concentrate and mix.
4. In another bowl, whisk together the water, maple syrup and egg, then add to the buttercream. Mix well.
5. Gradually add the oatmeal and mix everything together. Towards the end it works best with the hands.
6. Cover a baking tray with baking paper, form small balls from the dough (preferably as much as fits on a tablespoon) and place on the baking paper. Flatten the balls with the bottom of a glass. The dough tends to stick to the glass, but comes off easily with a knife.
7. Put the cookies in the preheated oven and bake on the middle shelf for about 15 to 20 minutes until golden brown.
8. Leave to cool on a wire rack, spread the jelly on one half, top with the other half and finally place half a hazelnut with the same jelly on the double-decker cookie.

Conclusion: the salty butter and nuts give the otherwise rather coarse oatmeal biscuits a rich, luxurious touch. The finely sour, not too sweet and slightly tart jelly complemented with a nice fruitiness without dominating. Very tasty biscuits that are better not kept in a biscuit tin, but baked fresh and then served on the Advent plate and eaten quickly ...

The hazelnut comes out best, almost chocolaty, when the biscuits have cooled down for a few hours. Since the oat flakes have a very present taste of their own, I recommend using the hazelnut butter generously with this recipe. If you use the mush in a shortcrust pastry or a cream, you should be sparing with it.

Wine accompaniment: if you prefer wine instead of tea or coffee, we recommend the Bastardo from Domaine Conceito from the Douro - it is beautifully fruity and at the same time tart, has a lot of character, but does not overwhelm the pastry with heavy tannins or too much body. A great combination!