On a recent rock climbing trip, I got to try it Australian cocks, delicious cookie muffins that you can buy at Costco food warehouse. These snacks were created in the early 2000s by the founder of Best Express Foods Jesus Mendoza as a healthier version of the iconic Aussie Anzac biscuit. I really liked the Aussie Bites and I also liked the ingredient list: oats, quinoa, dried fruit, flax and chia seeds, coconut and more, so I spent the last week testing, combining and modifying imitation recipes on the Internet to find with my favorite ingredients, ratios and a relatively streamlined process. The final recipe can be gluten-free or include sourdough scraps. These breakfast bites are packed with flavor and texture, and two, three (or five) of them are great whether you’re at home in the kitchen, on the road in the car, or on a long hike.
Notes on ingredients and method
I recommend precook the quinoa in this recipe It’s probably easiest to make more than the recipe calls for and season the extra for a side dish at a later meal. Using volume measurements, bring 1 part quinoa and 2 parts water to a boil. Cover the pan, turn off the heat and let rest for 20 minutes. Many Aussie Bites copycat recipes say you can use raw quinoa, but when I tried it, it created a lot of crackling in the bites during the first couple of days after cooking. (After the third day, the raw quinoa became soft.) Interestingly, the opposite happened when I made a batch of breakfast bites with cooked farro (spelt) instead of quinoa. Wheat berries were soft the first day after cooking, but became hard and difficult to chew beyond the second day.
THE dried fruit which you choose will greatly influence the sweetness of your breakfast morsels. Dates have a caramel-like sweetness. Dark raisins and currants are quite sweet, more so than golden raisins. Some apricots are very tangy and others are delicate and sweet. I recommend you adjust the Brown sugar based on nut choices, ratios and overall sweetness preference.
If you’re preparing these breakfast morsels without discarding the sourdough, which acts as a binder, we recommend processing the ingredients a little more finely (see the photos after the recipe). Large pieces of nuts and seeds are fun to chew but make the bites more crumbly. In both versions, the chia and flax seeds also act as a binder and should be left to set gelatinous into the liquid ingredients for at least 10 minutes before adding them to the dry ingredients.
If you don’t have a food processor, you can use a blender but you may need to work in parts and finally mix everything well in a bowl. Flaxseeds are best ground in a small spice grinder. If you don’t have any of these appliances, you can use store-bought oat flour and flax flour and grind the other ingredients by hand.
These bites bake well in a 24 mini cupcake pan, but you can also use a cookie sheet. This works especially well if you have a cookie scoop to create even mounds. You can see these cooking options in the file Photo gallery after the recipe.
Cookie style works too.
These energy-dense, fibre-rich breakfast bites are Breadtopia’s take on the popular Aussie Bites snack. Oats, quinoa, seeds and nuts are absolutely delicious and packed with nutrients. Make them gluten-free or use some sourdough scraps in the dough.
ingredients
- Optional 100 grams of sourdough waste (1/3 cup)
- 80 grams cooked quinoa (1/2 cup)
- 80 grams of maple syrup or honey (1/4 cup)
- 50 grams of brown sugar (1/4 cup)
- 35 grams flax flour (1/4 cup flax seeds, ground in spice grinder)
- 22 grams of chia seeds (2 tablespoons)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (4.2 grams)
- 100 grams of oil, light olive or avocado (a scant 1/2 cup)
- 175 grams of rolled oats, to be made into coarse oatmeal (1 3/4 cups)
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (2.6 grams)
- 1/4 teaspoon salt (1.5 grams)
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda (1.25 grams)
- 100 grams of dried fruit (~1 cup) 40 grams of apricots, 40 grams of dates, 20 grams of raisins
- 15 grams unsweetened desiccated shredded coconut (1/4 cup)
- 30 grams of pumpkin or sunflower seeds (1/4 cup)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease two mini muffin molds, preferably non-stick. You can also grease a large baking tray or line it with baking paper.
- In a small bowl, combine the optional sourdough scraps, cooked quinoa, maple syrup, brown sugar, flax flour, chia seeds, and vanilla extract and mix thoroughly. At this point you can add the oil on top of the mixture and it will not interfere with the gelatinization of the flax and chia. Set aside for about 10 minutes.
- In a food processor fitted with the metal blade, process the oats, cinnamon, salt and baking soda until coarse flour forms.
- Add the dried fruit, coconut and sunflower/pumpkin seeds. Pulse a few times to break up any larger pieces, then process until these additions are the size of sunflower seeds or smaller.
- Add the wet mixture to the ingredients in the food processor and blend until smooth. Transfer to a bowl and fill the wells of the mini muffin pan using a 1.5-inch diameter cookie scoop. With wet fingertips, pat the dough and add more if necessary to reach the edge of each well. You can also create small mounds of dough on a cookie sheet with a cookie scoop.
- Bake for 12-14 minutes until the edges of the morsels are golden.
- Remove the trays from the oven and allow the morsels to cool in the molds before removing them.
- Use a thin, non-serrated knife to separate each morsel from the pan on two sides before lifting.
- Store in a closed container for 4-5 days or freeze for long-term storage.
