Little Ivy Cakes

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!