Making Syrup Bites – you will love it like I do.

When the BF’s mom came to visit a couple of months ago, she brought along an old recipe book that belonged to the BF. It was given to him by his aunt when he moved away to Liverpool for university, in hopes that he would not need to survive on just instant noodles and 1 quid beers.

Thanks to Aunt Jean and that precious recipe book, my BF learned valuable cooking skills which proved very handy whenever I messed up his dinners.

# – The Dairy Book of Home Cookery.

The Dairy Book of Home Cookery now belongs to me. It mostly consists of basic recipes for almost any food you can imagine. One recipe that caught my eye was “Syrup Bites”. Personally, I have never heard of it and even googling did not yield any result. What does it look like? How does it taste like?

# – Syrup Bites?

And because I had all the ingredients in hand, I decided to make 24 pieces of “Syrup Bites”. I’m so glad I did, because they are absolutely DELICIOUS!

Ingredients A

  • 100 grams of self raising flour
  • 75 grams of rolled oats
  • 25 grams of dessicated coconut

Ingredients B

  • 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
  • 1 tablespoon of milk

Ingredients C

  • 100 grams of caster sugar (I reduced it from the original 125 grams)
  • 100 grams of butter
  • 2 tablespoons of golden syrup (you can also use honey or treacle)

# – First of all, mix Ingredients A (oat, self raising flour and dessicated coconut) together in a bowl and set aside.

# – Then, mix Ingredients B (milk and bicarbonate of soda) together in a small bowl and stir until bicarbonate of soda dissolves. Set aside.

# – Next, heat up a pot and put all of Ingredients C (butter, sugar and golden syrup) into it. Keep stirring till everything’s melted.

# – Pour ingredients B into the sugary, buttery mixture. Keep stirring.

# – The mixture will expand quite a bit, don’t panic and just keep on stirring. Remove from heat.

# – Now pour the concoction into Ingredients A.

# – Keep stirring until everything is mixed up like this. Leave to cool for 30 minutes or until quite firm.

# – Roll into 24 round pieces. To be honest, it was actually quite difficult to roll, you’d likely find yourself compressing it within your palm till it forms a ball.

# – Lay them out on a greased baking tray with parchment paper. Leave some space between each ball for expansion.

# – Stick it in a preheated oven at 180 degrees celcius for 15minutes.

# – 15 minutes later, golden brown, oat-ey goodness!

# – They will feel rather soft right out of the oven, but leave them on a wire rack to cool completely and they shall firm up entirely.

# – Perfect with creamy cold milk.

# – So this is how “Syrup Bites” look like.

After some research, I realised that Syrup Bites is actually very similar to ANZAC biscuits, which were created during World War 1 for soldiers’ rations. As it doesn’t have eggs, they keep really long as long as there’s no moisture.

On it’s own, it’s very crunchy without being dry and the buttery coconut-ty sweet golden syrup taste is simply to die for! When dipped in cold milk however, it softens up slightly and become a whole new level of delicious.

And because it’s got so much oats, I’d like to think that it’s healthy, almost ;)