An oatcake is a simple thing - oats, flour, butter, a little sweetness - but it repays good ingredients. These ones use heather honey in the dough, just one tablespoon, enough to give the biscuit a faint earthiness that lifts it well past a plain cracker. Then a spoon of heather honey straight over the cheese at the table, raw and uncooked, which is where you taste it properly. That contrast - the crisp oatcake, the strong cheese, the bold honey - is the whole point.
Tips from Niamh: Heather honey’s depth is exactly what makes these sing against a sharp cheddar or a blue. A little goes into the dough for flavour, but the real magic is a spoon of heather honey drizzled straight over the cheese at the table - that’s raw and uncooked, so you taste every bit of it. Serve it cold or at room temperature, where its bold aromatics come through best. Let the oatcakes cool fully on the tray; that’s when they crisp up.
Ingredients
- 150g porridge oats
- 50g plain flour
- Pinch of salt
- 75g butter
- 1 tbsp Peninsula Heather Honey, plus extra to serve
Method
- Heat the oven to 180 C and line a baking tray.
- Mix the oats, flour and salt in a bowl.
- Gently melt the butter with the honey, then stir into the dry ingredients to make a stiff dough.
- Press out to about 5mm thick and cut into rounds.
- Bake for 15-18 minutes until golden at the edges. Leave to cool on the tray to crisp up.
- Serve with cheese - sharp cheddar, a hard cheese, or a blue - and a drizzle of heather honey over the top.
If you want to understand why the honey tastes different raw versus baked into something, the post on what heather honey actually tastes like explains the aromatics and why heat changes them. The short version: the good stuff stays good when you leave it uncooked, which is exactly what that final drizzle is for.