Chewy wholemeal biscuits studded with cashews or dates – or whatever combination of dried fruit and nuts you prefer. I adapted them fairly heavily from Dan Lepard’s blueberry choc chip cookies. Next time I think I’ll reduce the sugar a bit even more, or use one of those less sweet alternative sugars, like coconut sugar. It was a good toddler-baking-assistant recipe – plenty of stirring involved.

ingredients:
100g softened unsalted butter
25ml rice bran oil
150g brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
200g wholemeal flour
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
good pinch of salt
100g – 150g dried fruit, such as chopped dates
100g cashews or other nutes
75g rolled oats

Heat up your oven to 170C (or 160C if it’s fan-forced). Chop up the nuts and dried fruit. Beat the butter, oil and sugar together with a spoon until smooth, then beat in the egg and vanilla extract. Add the flour, bicarb and salt, beat it in well, then stir in the dried fruit and nuts. It mixes up to a fairly damp dough.

Line two biscuit trays. Scoop up spoonfuls of the biscuit dough and roll them into rough 2-3cm balls. Pass the balls to your toddler, and tell him or her to press them gently onto the biscuit tray. This instruction will be ignored. You may need to uncompress some of the biscuits a little before baking them for around 15 minutes, until they’re just started to brown at the edges. They’ll firm up as they cool, and you can transfer them to a cooling rack after 10 minutes or so.