Sesame and Ginger Oat Biscuits

 - made from pastry scraps!

I've used this recipe before, when I've had a substantial amount of leftover shortcrust pastry. Last time I reduced the sugar in the original recipe and made savoury oat biscuits, this time I left in the suggested amount of sugar, added some sesame seeds and some crystallised ginger and made some fairly plain, not too sweet, biscuits which provided welcome relief from the excesses of rich food over the Christmas period.


It's more of a baking tip than a recipe - you weigh your pastry leftovers, then add the same weight of rolled oats and half that weight of butter and sugar. I started with 180g of shortcrust pastry, so added 180g of oats, 90g butter and 90g of soft brown sugar. I also added 2 tablespoons of sesame seeds and 50g of finely chopped crystallised ginger.

After leaving the bowl of ingredients for half an hour or so, for the pastry and butter to soften, everything is kneaded together either by hand or in a food processor. The dough is then rolled out to about 5mm thick and cut into shapes of your choice. These take about 15 minutes to bake at 180C - they need to be firm but not coloured too darkly.

The recipe I used, plus some other suggestions for using up leftover pastry, can be found on this link to the Guardian 'Readers' Recipe Swap'.