Everyone has a recipe that almost embodies them. Even if it’s not something you can personally cook, but something that you always can turn to for comfort, nostalgia, or just normality. For me it’s my very own take on breakfast eggs, which has taken a bit of practice to master.
Eventually, I earned my coveted place in the family kitchen by successfully getting them hankering over my butter fried, sunny side up eggs, with freshly plucked garden rosemary and seasoning, and a perfectly rich runny yolk.
Don’t come tell me this isn’t a real food recipe, because it’s too easy to count as one, I’ll prove you wrong, Gordan Ramsay style.
For my mum, it’s her traditional crunchies, or rather “crunch munch”, as her 8-year-old niece calls it, which has warmly filled our hearts…and mouths for years now. There was a time when weeks on end, we’d have crunchy jars stocked up in our home, and we would literally begin to sit by it, as it went by unnoticed, simply because it was on the table way too often. We seemed to be sick of it. However, once we grew up and my sisters had left home, we realized the significance of having a “childhood food memory”.
In Psychology, this may involve basic, non-verbal areas of the brain, that can bypass your conscious awareness. In a novel ‘Search Of Lost Time’, a French writer - Marcel Proust’s - remembers how eating a Madeleine cake as an adult evoked childhood memories of him seeing his aunt dipping those cakes in her tea. Ever since, any involuntary memory that conjures your past, has been known as a “Proustian moment”. Sounds a lot like my mums instant craving for tea the second those crunchies are out of the oven, sadly our khulungi tea doesn't take well to having biscuits or cake dipped in it.
And so, as adults, we found my mother’s home jars being filled up once again, only this time, for the grandkids.
Crunch Munch Crunchies
Ingredients:
1 cup oats
1 cup coconut
1 cup flour
¾ cup brown sugar
125g rama margarine
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1tbsp golden syrup
2-3 tbsp boiling water
Method:
Mix oats, coconut, flour, brown sugar and rama to form crumbs.
Add choc chips and pecan nuts (or any other snack options below).
Dissolve in a cup bicarbonate of soda, golden syrup and boiling water.
Mix it into the dough and form a soft dough.
Roll medium sized balls and space them out on a tray.
Bake till golden brown on 180 degrees.
Remove and switch oven off.
Put back into the oven until crispy.
I’ve highlighted adding choc chips and nuts, because I want to stress on how my mother took her recipe to another level, by having fun and adding her snack of choice to it. She noted how diverse the options were and how it enhanced the taste of her ‘old-fashioned’ biscuit. It was like adding make up. Same person, new look, with different appeal.
In a time where trends come and go so hastily, even good-old-granny recipes deserve some fashion. I don’t believe the true essence of a traditional recipe should ever be lost, but should be allowed to be remodeled. (Thinking like a grandkid.)
Here are a few nutty ideas to add and create your very own crunchy recipe:
1. Literally any nut you would like, ranging from pecan nuts, macadamias, almonds, cashews, pistachios, walnuts, hazelnuts and peanuts.
Our pecan nuts and macadamias are available whole, in halves, and in pieces for your baking convenience. Almonds and pistachios slivers are a wonderful and convenient baking addition.
2. Choc chips add a great sweet and junky touch to balance out the healthy oats. If it suits your taste, try adding chocolate raisins instead.
3. For those who are a bit more health conscious, sunflower seeds should cater to those needs. Tip: my mother lessened the sugar to a ½ cup recently, and you could hardly taste the difference.
4. Personally, if you really want to jazz it up, cranberries as well as coconut flakes definitely adds something to the flavour profiles.
All these snacks have to be giving you the cravings and the excitement to try them out and personalize your baking. Regular website visitors know how we love to add personality to our meals.
Well…what are you waiting for? Crazy Nuts Snacks supply you with all of the above. Browse our store options before you leave to satisfy those cravings, quick and easy!
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