Country Crisp Cereals

Ingredients

• 270 g Oat Flakes
• 20 g Rice Flour
• 100 g Sugar
• 20 g Crushed Hazelnuts
• 60 g Oil
• 50 g Water
• 70 g Chocolate
• 0.5 tsp Vanilla Extract

Method

Heat your oven to 120°C — this is a gentle low-heat-baking that dries rather than browns, which matters because you're after crunch without colour. The sugar-water mixture is your binder. Dissolve the caster sugar completely in the water first (a minute or two, stirring constantly); if any crystals remain, they'll create grittiness rather than that clean bind. The water-to-sugar ratio is critical here — you're aiming for saturation without a syrup that's so thin it slides off the oats before they crisp.

In a large bowl, combine the oat flakes, rice flour, hazelnuts, and vanilla. The rice flour is doing structural work — it absorbs moisture more slowly than oat alone, so your crisps won't go soft in storage as quickly. Pour the dissolved sugar syrup and oil over the dry ingredients and fold through until every piece of oat is coated evenly. You should have no dry pockets left. Spread the mixture onto a parchment-lined tray to a consistent depth of 1.5 to 2 cm — thinner spots will crisp too early and catch colour, whilst thicker patches stay soft inside.

Bake for 90 minutes to 2 hours. The mixture will look wet initially and gradually pale as breakfast cereals should — it firms up only as the water evaporates fully. Start checking at 80 minutes: press the surface with your finger. When it no longer yields to pressure and springs back slightly, it's done. This drying process, not browning, is what creates oats that stay crunchy rather than chewy. Pull it from the oven and leave it to cool for 15 minutes on the tray — it hardens further as it cools, so patience here saves you disappointment.

Once cool, break the sheet by hand into irregular chunks roughly the size of you want. Melt the 70 g chocolate gently over a bain-marie — don't let water touch it — then drizzle it over the cereal or toss the pieces through. Let the chocolate set on parchment before transferring to a sealed container. It'll keep for two weeks if the seal is tight; any moisture ingress ruins the crunch.