Teacher’s pet chocolate and hazelnut oaty biscuits

Here’s my theory on teenage boys and how to attract teenage girls. If they want girls to like them they need one of the following:

1. incredible good looks
2. the comedic value of Peter Kay/Michael McIntyre/the funny person of your persuasion
3. a super cool mother or sister
4. to be a great listener

These were the things that attracted me to boys at school, closely followed by mothers who could cook. I prolonged a relationship with one boy just to enjoy the smell of his mothers garlic infused roast chicken. It helped that she also fed us warm low alcohol lager too.

Obviously when your son is only 2 and a half you just don’t know which of the above list he might possess. One thing’s for sure, he’ll never have a super cool mother. My first car was a white Fiat Panda called Henry for goodness sake. If that doesn’t say Not Very Cool, I don’t know what does. What I can hopefully help him out with is biscuits and roast dinners and other nice smelling things to entice girls with. These biscuits were conjured as a gift for his playschool teachers. I was going to give them each a bottle of wine but that seemed wrong somehow.

Made about 37 but it really depends on the size of the dough balls

Ingredients:

• 250g salted butter
• 150g soft dark brown sugar
• 150g self raising flour
• 230g porridge oats
• 200g cheap dark chocolate
• 100g skinned, blanched hazelnuts

These are easy and very satisfying to make. Preheat the oven to Gas 4 and make sure the racks are in the middle of the oven. Then find some baking sheets. I used four I think. Prep the chocolate and hazelnuts. I chop both by whizzing the nuts in a food processor in 10 second blasts and then adding the chocolate in pieces and whizzing again. Totally up to you how fine or course you like your biscuit adornments. I like mine in about half centimetre pieces in case you’re interested.

Take the butter and soften it in the microwave in 10 second blasts on defrost until it’s soft and almost starting to melt. Then put in a large bowl and add the sugar. Use an electric hand mixer to cream until it’s smooth looking – takes about 4 minutes starting on low and finishing on high. I like to mix the butter and sugar together for about 30 seconds first with the mixer not even switched on, but that’s me. Just to stop the mixture flying out the bowl when you do switch it on.

Once mixed add the flour and oats and use your hands to combine. Then add your nuts and chocolate and again use your hands to ensure all the dough has an equalish amount of the good stuff. Then take pieces about the size of a plum and form into a ball using your hands. Place on the baking tray and squash down a little until your ball is about 1cm high. Continue until the dough is all used up and remember to space the biscuits about a biscuits width apart.

Bake in the middle of the oven, one tray at a time (so get a production line going) for around 20 minutes until the edges are starting to go a little golden but the middles will still look uncooked and soft and puffy. This is how you want them. Leave to harden on the tray and when you’re happy they won’t fall apart – about 20 minutes later, transfer to a wire rack to cool. Beware the loss of molten chocolate as you move them.

These are moreish. I can eat 6 in one sitting. Keep for a few days though if you’re less of a pig than me.

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