Cheese Selection with Home-made Oat Cakes

For a buffet party serve 5-7 (for a dinner party 3-4) different cheeses, make sure that you have a good variety with different textures and flavours, don't serve cheese that is hard to cut. Serve the cheeses on a large plate, or an attractive chopping board, accompanied with cheese knives. Lay the cheeses out so that they are attractive and accompany with walnuts,wedges of figs, plum or quince cheese and a bunch of grapes. Serve with slices of walnut bread and or baguette or similar bread, oatcakes (recipe below) or other plain biscuits (strong flavoured biscuits over power the flavour of the cheese).

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30 Oatcakes, Serves 8-12
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Prep: 10 minutes
Cook: 20 minutes

Ingredients

Oatcakes

  • 400g medium oatmeal
  • 100g pinhead oatmeal
  • 60g butter melted
  • 4 tsp caster sugar
  • 1 tbsp salt
  • 200ml boiling water

To Serve

  • A variety of 5-7 cheeses eg. camembert, goats cheese, blue cheese
  • 4-6 figs cut into quarters
  • bunch grapes
  • walnuts cracked open but still in their shells
  • quince cheese

Method

  1. Oatcakes: Preheat an oven to 180 °C. Place the medium and pinhead oatmeal in a bowl with the sugar and salt. Stir the mixture with a wooden spoon until well combined. Pour in the melted butter and mix it until well distributed. Make a well in the centre and pour in the boiling water, stir it until it comes together into a firm ball (it may seem wet at first but keep stirring it as the oats will absorb the water). Turn the dough out onto a work top dusted with wholemeal flour or ground oats. Knead the dough for a few minutes then roll it out until it is around .5mm thick. Using a biscuit cutter cut out individual biscuits and place them on a baking tray. Place the oatcakes on the centre shelf in the preheated oven. Leave them to cook slowly for 20 minutes. They should be firm and not coloured. Remove them from the oven and allow them to cool. Store them in a airtight container.
  2. To Serve: Serve the oatcakes with a selection of cheeses or accompanied with figs, grapes quince cheese, walnuts, and slices of bread.