A few years ago, 2 hours before attending a friend's Christmas party, I realised I had no presents so I did a quick search on the internet and found these cheese and oat biscuits.

These biscuits really are very good. They are flaky and cheesy and taste fantastic straight from the oven. But they are also very good bunged in a kilner jar ( once cool ) and tied with a ribbon and presented as a present. Best eaten whilst sipping a Prosecco or Kir Royale

They would also work well on a supper platter if you serve those to guests.

Cheese and Oat Biscuits Recipe

Ingredients

• 75g rolled oats ( I swear by Shropshire Pimhill Farm Oats )
• 125g plain flour ( using OO pasta flour gives a great result but it's not essential )
• 85g cold butter cut into cubes
• 75g very strong cheddar ( Oakly Park Cheddar from the Ludlow Centre is good )
• 25g pecorino ( or you could use parmesan if you prefer )
• 2 egg yolks
• 1/2 tsp Maldon sea salt
• 1/4 tsp of cracked black pepper ( I love pepper, you may prefer less )
• cold water

Optional ingredients that would be good are 1/2 tsp thyme leaves or chopped rosemary or a pinch of cayenne. Experiment with the cheeses or use whatever leftover cheese you have, provided it can be grated.

Method

Preheat the oven to fan 180 degrees C or 200 degrees C

Mix together the oats, flour, salt & pepper, herbs if using, and rub in the butter till you get the texture of large breadcrumbs. I just chuck it all in the mixer. Then grate in the cheese and mix well. Put in the egg yolks and mix together until you get a firm dough. Don't over mix. You may need to add a bit of water to get it into a dough.

Halve the dough and roll it out till it's quite thin. Then using a scone or biscuit cutter, cut out your biscuits. Pull any bits of dough back into a ball and keep rolling out and cutting biscuits until you've used all the dough.

Put on a baking tray ( I always line mine with  a silicone liner ) and bake for 10 minutes until golden. There will be too many biscuits for one tray so I do mine in batches.

If you can manage not to eat them all from the baking tray then place them on a wire tray to cool.

Freezing instructions

If you wanted to freeze them, I would freeze them on a tray uncooked. Then put them into a freezer bag. Take out of the freezer about an hour before you want to bake them, put them on a tray and then bake as above.