Giant Hobnob - "Jobnob"

Hobnobs are a ridiculously delicious type of biscuit, chocolate hobnobs even more so. The problem is that they are a bit too small.

Down in the labs at McVities, however, Loki has been jigging his mischievous dance. Evil biscuit scientists have created life from the fetid malformed afterbirth of the hobnob to engineer the monstrosity known as the mini-hobnob.

Now is time to correct the balance. I give you the Giant Hobnob - "Jobnob".

Ingredients

• 250g self-raising flour
• 250g brown sugar
• 250g porridge oats
• 250g butter
• 1tbsp golden syrup
• 1tbsp hot water
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 500g milk chocolate
  

Method

Before starting, make a flow-chart of the cooking process:


Add the butter to a pan and melt over a low heat. When melted, add the golden syrup and sugar and then stir until fully combined.



Now add the oats, flour, hot water and bicarbonate of soda, stirring like crazy to combine.


Now do the appropriate mathematics to ensure that your hobnob is scaled perfectly. In our case, we had enough mixture for about 25 regular 'nobs, so we had to scale the radius and depth by 5.


Layout the mixture in the shape of a hobnob. Make sure to check your scaling and always remember the motto of the good engineer - "measure twice, cut once!"

Bake for about 20 minutes.


While your 'nob is baking, melt the chocolate in a bain-marie. When the biscuit is baked, cover it in the chocolate and use a spatula to create the distinctive chocolate hobnob pattern.


Add cowbell to taste


Leave to cool and then put in the refrigerator for about 2 hours. Serve with a suitably large cup of tea.


Eat gracefully.


The Final Analysis

• Appearance - [4/5]: Looks pretty much like the real thing, except the colour of the oaty bit is slightly too dark. This would be improved by using a light sugar (I used dark muscavado).
  

• Smell - [4/5]: Mmm, baking.
  

• Texture - [5/5]: To the surprise of all, it was an almost perfect replica of the original hobnob's biscuityness.

• Taste - [4/5]: Chocolate and sugar? Yes please!
  

• Adventure! - [3/5]: Well, it's been done before, but not from scratch like ours!
  

• Overall - [4/5]: This was a fun cook and actually tasted good too - surprise your friends, family and random people you meet on the street with this mind-bogglingly big biscuit!
  

Thanks to my housemates and the amazing photographic mad-skillz of Niall Oswald and Thomas Hinton.