I’m here up in Arctic Norway after running another successful Northern Lights photography tour with Ewen Bell. We saw some incredible auroras over the two weeks with our friend and local guide, Guide Gunnar. I was private cheffing for the two week tour, and we enjoyed some of the local salmon, cod, reindeer and even a little bit of moose.

We are now spending our time relaxing and working on other jobs for future projects here in a house in Balteskard, not far from Grovfjord. It’s very remote compared to where we live in the Melbourne CBD. It’s very quiet, we are 1 hour away from a major town in either direction, and everything is currently covered in a fresh thick coating of snow.

I decided I could use this slow pace of life to try out some of the recipes I’ve been wanting to try. I made a large batch of raspberry jam using frozen raspberries, and promptly followed a recipe for a Louise cake. I’m not sure what happened, perhaps my beaters didn’t beat things well enough or the recipe was not good because the cake was burning top and bottom in the oven by the time I went to check on it. Feeling defeated by it all, Ewen helped clean the mess I had made kitchen and I found a new recipe to use up some more of the jam. I came across this recipe for Nagi’s raspberry jam oat bars and thought that would go down well with our friends here. I only had a circle cake tin, not a square, but I quite like how pretty it turned out in the circle shape instead, feels like it should be in a cafe!

We shared it with our friends down the mountain, one came with his tractor to plough our driveway, and we walked down through knee high thick snow to deliver the rest. All in all a delicious way to use up any jam you might have left over.

Raspberry Jam Oat Slice

RecipeTin Eats – Nagi Maehashi

Print Recipe

Servings 16

Ingredients

  

• 125g unsalted butter, melted
• 1 egg
• 225g plain flour
• 135g rolled oats
• 100 g brown sugar, tightly packed
• ½ tsp baking powder
• Pinch salt
• 300g raspberry jam (or other flavour)

Instructions

 

• Preheat oven to 200°C (180°C fan). Grease a 20cm cake tin with butter then line with baking paper with overhang (so it can be lifted out once cooked).
• Oatmeal cookie base – Melt butter in a microwave proof bowl. Mix in sugar until lump free. Add egg then mix until incorporated. Then add flour, oats, baking powder and salt and mix until you can no longer see flour.
• Base – Spread 1½ cups of the mixture in the prepared pan, and press in with your hands. Spread with jam (microwave to loosen, if needed), then use your hands to crumble the remaining mixture over the top (Note 3).
• Bake for 30 – 35 minutes or until the top is deep golden. Remove and allow to fully cool in the pan (~ 2 hours) before lifting out of the tin using the baking paper. (Speed things up: 30 min counter, 30 minute fridge)
• Cut into 16 slices. Enjoy!