Time for a third (and final) revision in the series! After the disappointing results of my previous attempt, I revised the recipe a bit, removing the milk powder and adding a little milk to give the baking powder somewhere to react, and adding even more butteriness:
- 175g white flour
- 50g white sugar
- 25g dark Muscovado sugar
- 60g oats (porridge, not jumbo)
- 125g butter
- 50g golden syrup
- 10ml milk
- 2tsp baking powder (actually an 11g “Alsa” sachet)
- Pinch of salt
- 2tsp of butter flavouring
- 1/4tsp vanilla powder
- A small bowl of Demerara sugar (cassonade in France) for rolling
Instructions are unchanged, apart from adding the milk. I dropped the oven temperature to 140°C and found that they needed baking for about 35 mins, much longer than the earlier attempts. They came out nice and crunchy, though I managed to forget to roll them in the Demerara; I couldn’t figure out why they were hard to flatten as they stuck to the spatula so much, which the Demerara prevents. Duh.
Anyway, these came out pretty well, and I’m happy enough with the recipe at this point.
I had this peculiarly specific desire to make some biscuits that were crunchy rather than chewy. Nigella didn’t seem to have anything that fitted the bill, but I found this recipe in Rachel Allen’s “Bake” book that I got for Christmas, and have had good results with so far. 
When rolling out the biscuits (definitely the best part) I thought they looked oddly like small potatoes. Next time I won’t squash them quite so much so that they stay a bit rounder. While I was baking there was an enormous rainstorm, really quite spectacular and unexpected as it had been quite sunny all day. 
They came out brilliantly (if I say so myself), a lovely crisp mixture of sweet and spicy, exactly what I was after. As usual, the main problem with making biscuits is that I eat them, which isn’t terribly good for me. I did send some round to Sandeep and Pam though, and they are proving handy for bribing Zoë.