Homemade 3-Ingredient Oatcakes
These homemade oatcakes take only 3 ingredients and minutes to make! Perfect to bake at the weekend for snacks and lunchboxes throughout the week.
When you are trying to eat more healthy food as a family, snacks can be tough. Particularly if you are out and about when hunger strikes. At home, I can grab hard-boiled eggs, raw or pre-cooked veg or some fruit, but these are not always the easiest thing to transport, and sometimes I just plain forget!
The problem is, as soon as you set foot into a shop to buy a kid-friendly snack, you are welcomed by some pretty ghastly ingredients. And since dried fruit and fruit juice are a higher sugar treat for us rather than a daily food to protect our kids’ teeth, we can’t even grab the so-called “healthy” alternatives that are often packed with these alternatives.
Often, when in this scenario, I will simply buy fresh fruit or a pack of oatcakes. They are quick, easy options I feel I can trust and know the kids will eat. But recently I noticed that on many oatcakes, the ingredients list includes: rapeseed oil, palm oil, and even sugar (although in trace amounts).
The tiny amount of sugar doesn’t particularly worry me, but the vegetable oils are more present in each oatcake, and while not always totally avoidable, we do try to keep these often highly-processed oils to a minimum in our diet. Palm oil is primarily an ethical issue for us. But vegetable oil is purely for health reasons.
Touted as a health product, it is frequently highly processed (always a warning sign for me!) and has a high chance of being rancid in the bottle or product. Not especially appetising!
So I wondered how hard it would be to make my own vegetable oil-free oatcakes. And as it turns out, it is unbelievably easy. So easy that my 2 and a half-year-old can make them! I can make a big batch for the month ahead in one 25-minute session while I make other things alongside it, as all it requires is pouring ingredients into a blender, hitting Start, rolling and cutting and then baking. 5-minutes work and 20 minutes baking to have a healthy snack that tastes better and is healthier than shop-bought ones and is easily portable for when we are out and about.
Perfect!
This recipe makes enough oatcakes to last us about a month as a family of four. How many you get exactly will totally depend on the size of cutter you use. We make ours smaller than the shop-bought ones and get quite a lot, but you can easily make them as big as or bigger than the packaged kind and simply have less of them. The recipe is also easily doubled and you can freeze them after they have cooled to get out at a later date.
Little hands can:
- help you add ingredients to a food processor and push the button to pulse together
- help you slowly drizzle the water in
- roll out the dough and use a cookie cutter to help you cut the oatcakes out
- 200 g oats make sure you use gluten-free oats if you are avoiding gluten
- 100 g wholemeal flour a gluten-free one will work fine
- 50 ml olive oil
- decent pinch of salt optional but adds flavour
- pinch of dried herbs optional but adds flavour
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Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas 4.
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Blitz the oats in a food processor until it resembles flour. Add in the rest of the ingredients and turn on the food processor again as you drizzle in 150ml-175ml water a bit at a time, stopping when the mixture just starts to come together as a dough.
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Roll out the dough (it might be a bit crumbly, but should just about hold together, I find rolling it between two sheets of greaseproof paper is the best way to keep it intact). Cut into small circles.
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Bake for 20-35 mins, until firm, golden and cooked.
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Allow to cool completely.
Need more lunchbox and snack-friendly recipes? Check these ones out!
Hi Claire I’m excited to find your website! The store bought oatcakes I’m munching on now are made with sunflower oil.. is it pretty bad? Regardless I’m thinking these would be pretty easy to make. Have you ever used coconut oil? Thanks!
Hi Gwyneviere (beautiful name by the way!),
Glad you have enjoyed discovering the website. 🙂
I tend to avoid vegetable & seed oils due to health issues associated with them, the extraction process (includes bleach and various other questionable ingredients), and the fact that many could be rancid in the bottle (https://authoritynutrition.com/are-vegetable-and-seed-oils-bad/), but it is virtually impossible to avoid them totally today as sunflower oil and rapeseed (canola) oil are included in so much and often termed “healthy”. So I occasionally (rarely) use grountnut (peanut) oil and sesame seed oil in small amounts, and I do from time to time buy products that contain vegetable oils to save time. But I am definitely aiming to be as vegetable-and-seed-oil-free as possible (my real test is to create homemade mayonnaise that doesn’t just taste of olive oil!).
I’ve not made these with coconut oil, since it is more like butter than other oils (it is solid at room temperature) so it may change the texture slightly. But I imagine it could work – it’s certainly worth a try. Olive oil definitely works though! 🙂
Hope you enjoy the recipe and website.
Claire
These are very good and the dough was easy to handle. I did bake them for longer than stated to get a crisper oatcake.
Glad they worked well for you Judy. Depending on the oven sometimes you do need a little longer to make them crisp up properly – I’ve changed the recipe to make sure that’s clear! 🙂
Hi! How would you change the recipe to add some grated veggies to the dough? (e.g. carrots or beets)
Oh Lys, I love that idea! I usually happily add veggies wherever I can get away with it, but it might be a bit of a struggle here. The main problem is that veggies would add a lot of water and make quite a soft dough. I would probably grate the veg (carrot/beets would be prefect) and then add a decent pinch of salt and leave to drain the water for at least half an hour. I would then drain through a sieve and press down to squeeze as much water out as possible, and then add to the dough before adding the water. Then I would add only just enough water to bring the dough together and roll out and bake as usual. I haven’t tested it, so cannot guarantee it would work, but please do let me know how it turns out if you try it, as I’d happily amend the recipe to show that as an option (I love finding ways to add vegetables to things that don’t usually have them in). Hope it works well for you. 🙂
Dear Claire, Thank you for your lovely recipe on oatcakes. Please can I just check – these are okay to be kept in an airtight container for a month and they are still fresh enough? Best wishes. Fiona
Hi Fiona, a month might be a little while for them to stay fresh. In an airtight container they should last at least a week, maybe two. They might start to go a bit soft after that. But you could freeze the dough after cutting laid out on a lined baking tray in the freezer and then place in a freezer bag which should keep for a few months. Then you can just bake straight from frozen for an extra few mins. 🙂
Having looked at various products without palm oil and seen the price, I am going to use your recipe Claire. I will try freezing them too and getting them out the freezer when the oven is being used for something else to save on energy.
Sounds great, hope you enjoy them David! 🙂
I gave up eating bread & started eating Woolworth’s own brand oatcakes instead, as they about 75% oats, but they are not always available, so I tried your recipes, & they turned out very well. Will make my own in future, they don’t taste exactly the same, but near enough, & I shall experiment with adding other ingredients. DD
Yay, glad they worked out for you David! 🙂
Ooh, yummy. I halved the quantity because I had not made them before, but now wish I had gone with the full amount. I added three small birds eye chillies to the half quantity. They are so tasty that actually I think they are good enough without cheese. I am trying to be as plastic free as possible, so am thrilled to have found this recipe. No more cracker buying for me. These are so quick and easy to make that it is as easy as picking a packet from the shelf. Many thanks. Claire
Oh, I’m so glad you enjoyed them Claire. 🙂 Chillies in them is a fab idea – I’ll have to try that!