Last week I attended a fabulous event in Joburg with the lovely folks from Sasko. The Sasko Chefs Kitchen took place at the stunning Pick ‘n Pay Good Food Studio in Sandton, and on a rainy Thursday morning the foodies gathered to cook up a Sasko feast.

We were divided into two teams and given ten minutes to brainstorm and plan our menu which was to be a family feast. Each team was headed up by a chef and our team captain was Chef Katlego Mlambo. We had an hour and a half to whip up our dishes and I have to say that although it was a competition and we were busy the atmosphere was relaxed and everybody got along well. There was also an opportunity to style and photograph our dishes with the industry pros and get a few tips from them. It was great to see some of my fellow bloggers in action in the kitchen and I am happy to report that Team Kat took the win, hooray! The day ended with a shared lunch where we got to try out all of the dishes, and a prize giving. Thank you Sasko for inviting me, I had such a good time.

Onto this week’s recipe. I enjoy playing around with different types of flours (check out these recipes for spelt flour pizza and paleo chocolate banana bread) and recently bought a bag of macadamia nut flour to try out. It is gluten free of course and can be used in place of almond flour with the added bonus of being slightly less expensive! I am still getting my head around gluten free baking and I wanted to develop a gluten and refined sugar free everyday oat crunchie – the macadamia flour worked nicely here. I have sweetened the crunchies with raw honey and added some citrus peel to delicately lift the flavour. These great tasting oat crunchies make a good afternoon snack (with a cup of tea of course!) and are really easy to whip up yourself.

Cook’s notes:

• if gluten is not an issue you can use regular oats instead of the gluten free kind.
• the macadamia nut flour can be substituted with almond flour.