Guide to Make Quaker Oats

A Guide to the Different Types of Oats

Oats are one of the most important grain crops in the world, especially in cool, temperate areas. Oats have an open seed head and will grow in moist, cold climates on poor soil. Oats can be used for making cookies, cakes, and porridge. They are also used as a filler in hearty soup recipes.

Guide to Make Quaker Oats

Oats are used by the cosmetic industry too and there are all kinds of hair products, skincare products, and bath additives made with oats, which have soothing, moisturizing, and anti-itch properties.

The Best Known Oat Varieties

There are various kinds of oats and it is important to know this if you are going to make a recipe, which calls for oats as one of the ingredients. Oat groats are the grain with only the husk removed. Pinhead oats are made by cutting whole oats into pieces with steel cutters. These are nutritious because the oat bran and grain is left intact.

Rolled oats come in regular and jumbo varieties. They can be used to make porridge or added to muesli. To make jumbo oats the grain is steamed and then passed between rollers. Regular oats are smaller and they can be used for dessert recipes like parkin or cookies.

Oatmeal comes in coarse, medium and fine varieties and this can be added to a soup or stew as a thickener, used to make scones or crumble toppings or used in cookie recipes.

Instant oats are made by cooking pinhead oatmeal for a long time. The more you cook something the more nutrients are lost, so instant oats (which are used to make instant porridge) is the least nutritious type.

Recipe for Parkin

This moist cake is sweet, dark, and flavored with ginger. It is especially popular in the north of England and contains lemon, molasses, syrup, and oatmeal, amongst other ingredients, to give it a distinctive, rich flavor. Store cooked parkin in an airtight container for a few days and it will taste even better.

What you will need:

12 oz medium oatmeal

4 oz corn syrup, golden syrup, or honey

4 oz butter

1 teaspoon ground ginger

2 tablespoons milk

4 oz molasses

Grated rind from 1/2 a lemon

2 oz brown sugar

4 oz all purpose flour

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

How to make it:

Grease an eleven by seven inch cake tin, and then line it with greased parchment paper. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Stir the flour, lemon rind, ginger and oatmeal together. Melt the butter in a pan over a low heat, and then add the sugar, syrup, and molasses. Pour this liquid into the flour mixture and combine well.

Stir the milk and bicarbonate of soda together, and then add this to the batter, beating it well. Pour the batter into the cake tin and bake the parkin for an hour and a half or until a skewer inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.

Let the cake cool in the tin for ten minutes, and then put it on a wire rack to cool completely.

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