Finnish style oat & chocolate cookies

Here's a recipe for cookies including dark chocolate, hazelnuts and lots of oats. They even made me think of how great it would be to eat them along with some hot chocolate, having a view on the lake at sunset. Maybe I am getting Finland-nostalgic.

Ingredients (12-14 cookies):
100 g dark chocolate
50 g hazelnuts
2 dl wheat flour
2 dl oats
1 teaspoon vanilline sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of salt
100 g margarine or butter
1 dl sugar
1 egg

Preparation:
Cut the chocolate and the hazelnuts into small pieces. Mix together in a bowl the dry ingredients. Mix the soft butter with sugar. Add the egg and mix intensely. Finally add the dry ingredients and mix the dough until it becomes uniform. Form a bar 20 cm long and 6 cm wide out of the dough. Cut the bar into 1 cm wide pieces and place the pieces of dough on baking paper on an oven plate. Bake them in the oven heated to 175 c for around 12 minutes (they are ready when they have got some colour).

Apple pie featuring oats

Here's the recipe for a heavenly oat-driven apple pie. Yes, Finns use them even in apple pie. Comes out really good! I recommend it if you still haven't tried!

Ingredients (8 portions):
100 g butter
1 egg
1 ½ dl oats
½ dl sugar
1 ½dl wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

2-3 apples

On top:
50 g butter
½ dl sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
1 ½ dl oats

Preparation:
Mix the sot butter, egg, sugar, oats, flour and baking powder together. Apply butter on the surface of your baking mould. Press the dough onto the bottom of the mould and use extra flour to help. Peel and slice the apples and settle them on the dough.
For the topping: Melt the butter and mix into it the sugar and the oats. Dust the mix equally on the whole surface of the pie.
Bake the pie in 200 c for 25 minutes.
Excellent served with vanilla sauce or vanilla ice cream!

Finnish-style oat bread

I'm totally a sucker for such bread that you can get in Finland - partly or completely full-grain stuff, with not much yeast or none at all, firm, and so charming of taste that you prefer to eat it without anything on it so that the bread itself is the centre of attention. I couldn't find the right flour here though so I had to use white wheat flour. But anyway the bread came out so beloved that both of them were eaten in less than 10 minutes. Oats are very popular in Finland, and it is a common conviction there that you should eat some oats every day to be friendly to your heart and to reduce LDL cholesterol.

Ingredients (for 2 breads 20 cm of diameter):
3 dl dark wheat flour (hiivaleipäjauhoja/jästbrödsmjöl)
1 dl oats
½ teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 dl grated cheese
50 g margarine
2 ½ dl milk

Preparation:
Mix the flour, oats, salt and baking powder in a bowl with a wooden fork. Add the grated cheese, the milk and the margarine that you've previously melted. Mix quickly, don't mix a lot! It is normal that the dough is very loose. Put baking paper on an oven plate. Pour half of the dough on the baking paper and pat it with floured hands into the shape of a bread of 20cmx20cm. Form another bread next to it (or after the first one has been baked). Bake in the oven in 225 c for 15 minutes.