Part Two of A in The A-Z of Cooking concerns itself with one of the best meals of the day, the after school snack.
I chose to make the Date Crunchies purely on the basis that I had every single ingredient already in my pantry.
That never happens!
But first, two intros to After School Snacks. The original from The A-Z of Cooking
“Welcome home your hungry young scholars with something nourishing to tide them over until suppertime”
May have pleased mothers but set children all over the world weeping. They didn’t want something nourishing, they wanted something chockful of sugar with maybe a bit of artificial colouring thrown in.
Not so my After School Snacks Haiku:
Hungry After School?
Dates and Oats Make Good Crunchies
Yummy for your tum.
Did I miss a career in marketing or what?
And…we’re done with the poetry. Trust me. There will be no sonnets to breakfast food, no odes to the buffet. Unless you really like them. In which case get ready for a whole heap of limericks and haikus because that’s about my limit.
Date Crunchies – The Good
- These are kinda sorta almost healthy with the sweetness coming from dates and honey instead of sugar, and the use of oats and wholemeal flour.
- Dates, honey and cinnamon are a combination that works amazingly well together. And the little bit of lemon made the it even better!
- I think I probably like them more now than I would have as a child when I would have wanted something sweeter.
- Apparently they worked well with a glass of milk. This is on hearsay only. I have never liked milk and even the thought of drinking a full glass of it makes me want to gag.
- Working the dough was the best arm workout I have had in a long time. I’m pretty sure I’ve staved off bingo wings for at least another year just by that alone.
Date Crunchies – The Bad
- The the quantities in the recipe seemed wrong. I needed a lot more water to soften the dates and a pinch of cinnamon is no good to anyone. You need at least 1/4 teaspoon.
- More than this though that pasty was way too short. I was lovely and light but you just had to look at it the wrong way and it crumbled. It needed an egg or something else to bind it together a bit more.
Date Crunchies – The Ugly
Let’s also address the other elephant in the room when in comes to this recipe. In some places in Australia, “date” is a colloquial expression for one’s…well…anus. So a date crunchie is probably not something that should be even remotely appetizing. As for these? They were better than that. Just not by much.
In all honesty, they were perfectly acceptable. They were average. There was nothing fundamentally hideous about them. Truth be told, it’s taken me ages to write this post simply because I find it really hard to describe food that’s just….meh….
WouId I have wanted these as an afternoon snack when I was a child?
Hell no.
But I was a weird only child with a working mother. She didn’t have time to bake and I had an idea that anything homemade was bound to be inferior to something that could be bought from a shop. I was far happier with a perfectly formed store-bought Tim Tam than anything homemade and vaguely hippyish.
Now? That date filling was rather nice…but you know what? I think I’d still prefer a TimTam. I may make the Date Crunchie dough again just so I never have to do another tricep dip in my life.
Date Crunchies – not an epic fail, not even a fail, just not much of a pass… And with that, we’re done with the A’s.
Next time we venture into The A-Z of Cooking we’re heading to Canada for B..B..Breakfast.
Have a great week! 
