When I was a kid, my family would go to this awesome restaurant in town from time to time. The thing I loved about this restaurant was that instead of putting dinner rolls or bread on the table while you waited, they put baskets of oatcakes. Big thick oatcakes, probably 3" x 3" square and 1cm thick. They were sweet, and chewy, and that was my favorite part about going to this restaurant, because I had never eaten another oatcake like it anywhere.
The chef at the resort I worked at while working abroad thought it would be a brilliant idea that when a guest finished their meal, instead of receiving a mint with their bill, they would receive several bite sized oatcakes. I never saw if this process actually happened in the restaurant as it was definitely slow going early in the season. Once the bus groups ramped up, I was making individual packages of 2 bite sized oatcakes for each person on the bus tour. Some mornings I'd have to have 42 (thats 84 oatcakes) ready...other mornings three times as many. Whatever the reason, it seemed that oatcakes became a regular thing on the list of things to do all the time.
At first, I thought this a great opportunity for me to find an authentic "Nova Scotia Oatcake" recipe for all the worldwide travelers to taste and marvel over, as I once did when I was a little girl in that restaurant. So I searched and searched online. I checked cookbooks and asked the others in the kitchen. In the end, during the middle of my workday, standing in the middle of my baker's kitchen, I did what any other self respecting girl would do when she didn't know what else to do. I called my mother.
My mother checked her recipes and had a recipe called "Nova Scotia Oatcakes". And that is what recipe we used all summer. It was simple to make, easy to roll and they tasted great! The first few times I made them I was in love. One small recipe made 150 1" x 1" bite sized oatcakes. I thought, "This is going to be a piece of cake!". However, my mind was quickly changed after the first thousand oatcakes turned out. I never wanted to see another oatcake again. It wasn't the mixing, or the rolling, or the cutting. The most hateful part was having to individually wrap packages of 2 oatcakes for the bus tours. It also made me dread those little order slips I would get left on my counter long after my day was finished. I would come in the next morning to find out I needed to make another 200 oatcakes. Then another. And yet more.
It wasn't so bad, really, until that one morning I walked in to no slips on my counter. You see, when the oatcakes were ordered for the bus tours, they had to be ready to go out to the front desk staff by 8am. My morning started at 5am everyday so it was no problem to achieve this. At 745am one morning, a front desk staff member came in looking for 64 packages of oatcakes (That's 128 oatcakes). The slip got handed into the chef's office, instead of to the baker's kitchen. After finding the order slip, I then had to do a major scramble amidst the other million things I had to do that day, to drop everything and slam out these annoying little packages of oatcakes for those 64 seniors on a bus tour that simply had to have their oatcakes before they left the resort. And got them they did. It doesn't seem like it now, but I never felt so stressed out over a simply little cookie ever before.
By the end of the summer, I was hateful toward oatcakes. I didn't want to see those little order slips. I didn't want to hear there was another bus tour pulling in. I didn't want to roll out and cut another 200 little oatcakes...EVER AGAIN. I haven't made oatcakes since I left the resort (over 8 months ago) but I actually have been wanting to make some lately since I do love them so much. That restaurant I loved to visit for the oatcakes years ago has since gone out of business in the last year so I'm sad I will never be able to indulge in my childhood delight at that restaurant again. But at least I have the knowledge, appreciation and know-how to make them myself. Please make some for yourself sometime, and know that behind every baked good, there is always a story to be told. Enjoy!
~Sally
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