HobNobs?
with a spot of tea perhaps?

Here's the Wikipedia explanation:
A HobNob is a brand of biscuit made from rolled oats and jumbo oats, similar to a flapjack/biscuit hybrid. They are mainly sold in the United Kingdom. The biscuit can be dunked in tea without losing its shape. Invented by Julien Pike, the recipe was purchased by McVitie's who introduced the brand in Scotland in 1984. A milk chocolate-covered version was made available in 1987, and the biscuit is currently available in many varieties.
The original tagline of the HobNob was "one nibble and you're nobbled"

The name comes from an earlier phrase, to hob or nob, meaning "to drink together, taking turns toasting one another," probably from Middle English habbe "to have" and nabbe, a contraction of ne + habbe, "to have not," hence, "to have and have not, to give and take."

I saw these hobnobs here from KJ's blog A Cracking Good Egg who got the recipe here from Kittens in the Kitchen.

They looked so good and seemed simple to make so I had to try making them. I decided to split the main recipe in thirds for the flavors I thought of: Haystack Style, Vanilla, and Orange Spice.

The only thing that didn't seem right when I made these was that the batter was a litte too buttery. Butter was running out of the batter. I would mix it in again and then while the batter would sit for a second or two, butter would run out of the batter. When I baked a test batch, the cookies spread like crazy. Like in the picture below. I knew this was not how they were supposed to turn out.
I am not exactly sure why this happened but, I just added some AP flour to the the rest of the batter until the butter was soaked up. It might be because I didn't have salted butter so I used unsalted butter instead. Oh, and I used corn syrup and maple syrup instead of golden syrup. OOPS-Hehe.

My version of the Recipe:

2 cups butter
1 tbs. light corn syrup
1 tbs. maple syrup
1 tbs. hot water
1/2 tsp. baking soda
2 cups self-rising flour
1 1/2 flour (optional) or as needed
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups oats

-Pre heat oven to 350 oF
-Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper
-Mix flour, sugar and oats in a large mixing bowl.
-Melt butter, syrups, and water in a pot. When melted, take off the heat and mix in baking soda.
-Then add butter mixture to the flour mixture and mix well with a wooden spoon.
-Split batter if you want to make different flavors.
-Roll batter into balls the size of a ping pong ball and then flatten a little.

Batch One: Haystack Style
I Planned for mini chocolate chips, small coconut bits, and coconut extract. Because the batter was warm when I mixed in the chocolate chips they melted and made the batter completely chocolate. A mistake I was actually happier with the results than my original chocolate chip idea.
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips
1/4 cup or less coconut bits
1 tbs. coconut extract


Batch Two: Vanilla
I kept the batch untouched except adding 1 tsp. vanilla extract.Batch Three: Orange Spice
I added 2 tsp. cardamom and 1 tbs. orange zest. These have such a nice aroma.
Well, I hope you try these, they were simply fun to make and to play around with.
Have a great Weekend!

THE END!

9 comments:

KJ said...

Yaaay - HobNobs. You know I had a similar experience with the butter. But I thought that I had got it wrong when I converted it from cups to grams. So I didn't mention it in my post. Oh dear, I'm sorry about that. I will go back and amend my post to note it.

I'm glad they worked out eventually and that you enjoyed them.

Michelle said...

Oh boy...your cookies look liked their filled with buttery goodness!!! It's been a while since I baked cookies too.

BTW, you've been tagged! Please visit my blog to find out the meme rules in my post titled "I've been tagged again". Have a great day!

Michelle

shannie cakes said...

those look great.

the vanilla is making my mouth water!

now... if i could find a way to make them rainbow colored... haha

Manali said...

Hey...
Those HobNobs were great. My husband Amit loved them. Now I have to make those...:)

Laura Paterson said...

Wow - I love what you've done with the different flavours here!

It sounds like I've made a boob with the recipe notes - I will review the butter levels next time I make them...

Anonymous said...

Hi again!

There has to be something wrong with the proportions in this recipe. I read your notes about the butter, so I reduced it by 1/4 of a cup. It wasn't enough -- my batter was still oozing butter and I sprinkled quite a lot more flour in (and rolled the balls of dough in flour to stop them sticking to my hands).

They're not much like real Hobnobs :-) But yum, they are tasty! I used half maple syrup and half golden syrup and flavoured part of the batch with lemon and cardamom. I weighed as I went along, and next time I think I'll go for something like:
100 g oats
250 g flour
250 g sugar
350 g butter (or even 300 g)

Ivy said...

Thanks Veronica! Next time I make these, I will try your version. :)

Anonymous said...

Me again! I've found what I'm almost certain is the original for this hobnob recipe, because the method and ingredients are the same:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=5474118

and the amount of butter has gone hugely wrong in translation! In fact all the proportions are out of whack. The original uses 8 oz (225g) each of oats, flour, sugar, and ... margarine (well, I'd use butter). 2 cups of butter is therefore approximately double what's required.

I'm sure this version would turn out better, must try it! When I do, I'll blog about it.

Anonymous said...

I finally got around to trying this again! The results were much better, though ironically the mixture was a little bit dry this time. It made nice crisp, crumbly biscuits though. My post is here.