Oat and Walnut Crackers
We fell head over heels in love with oat crackers while in New Zealand, not traditional Scottish Oatcakes which we treat like old friends but sassy crunchy crackers with nuts. First the walnut variety caught our attention, then the hazelnut. Crisp bites with a hint of salt and a nuance of sweetness, these crackers were a moreish pop in the mouth snack and the perfect complement to delicious Kiwi cheese.
Made locally and available at all self respecting food stores in New Zealand, we vowed life long loyalty to these delicious morsels, until we discovered after returning to Oz that the only online supplier here charged twice the $$ we had paid in NZ. If you see Oat Crackers made by 180 degrees, grab them, you’re in for a treat.
Meanwhile I set about recreating the walnut variety based on the ingredient list on the side of the package: oats, walnuts, butter, tapioca flour, salt, sugar and bicarbonate of soda. I had successfully made oatcakes before so I simply messed together my recipe with the ingredient list off the package. The flavour was good, but the bite all wrong. Too much tapioca flour I think.
I decided to fly by the set of my pants with the next attempt. Again the flavour was good, but the crackers were too short, too crumbly. I think in all honesty I over processed the walnuts and made the oils run, carelessness on my part. This dough is much better made by hand.
With a sense of oatcake deja vu (it too 3 attempts to get them right) I tried again, determined to nail a reasonable facsimile of the real thing before I forgot what I was aiming for.
Success!
Oat and Walnut Crackers
110g Rolled Oats
75g Shelled Walnuts
40g Unsalted Butter
125mls boiling water
30g Tapioca Flour
1 teaspoon Sea Salt
1 tablespoon Brown Sugar
1 teaspoon Baking Powder
Gluten Free plain flour for dusting the bench and rolling pin.
Preheat the oven to 170C.
Line 2 oven trays with baking paper.
Process the rolled oats to a fine floury meal then transfer to a mixing bowl.
Process the walnuts until very finely chopped, but stop before the oil runs from them. Add to the oatmeal.
Add the tapioca flour, salt, sugar and baking powder and mix thoroughly.
Chop the butter into small pieces then pour the boiling water over. Stir until the butter has melted, then tip into the dry ingredients.
Mix until thoroughly combined and the mixture forms a ball. Use a pastry scraper to draw all the dough into a ball. The dough will be quite sticky.
Cover the dough and set aside to rest for at least 30 minutes.
The oats will absorb the moisture.
Using gluten free flour, dust the bench.
Cut the dough in half, then roll one piece out until it is 3-4mm thick.
Use a fluted cookie cutter to cut the dough into circles.
Lift the cut pieces onto the paper lined tray with a spatula. The crackers can be placed quite close together on the tray, they will not spread.
Repeat with the second half of the dough, then repeat these steps with the rerolled trimmings.
Bake for approx 20 minutes or until golden brown.
Makes approx 40 yummy walnut oat crackers.
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84 comments on “Oat and Walnut Crackers”
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Please Pass the Recipe by Sandra Gay is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Please Pass the Recipe 
Double Yum! I left NZ and am now in Spain. I miss these crackers so much. I ate them on there own many a time, simply because they have a beautiful taste and perfect texture. While my homemade effort had only a glimmer of the original. They were still delicious. I will always make these now. Thank you for doing still the leg work!
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Is it possible to swap the butter for olive oil? Dairy free friends are such a challenge 🤣
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Hi Biddy if you read through the comments on the recipe post you will see how other cooks have managed to substitute ingredients with success. Personally I have not tried to bake these crackers using olive oil instead of butter so all I can say is proceed with care. Keep in mind that butter is a mix of solids and liquids so be cautious with a direct swap. Good luck
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Lifesaver posting this recipe! These are my absolute favourite crackers however I just cannot justify the price of buying them! My go to are the almond ones so thought I’d give those a crack (no pun intended!) I read in the comments your suggestion to add an extra 10g of butter since the nuts aren’t as oily however my mixture ended up being quite wet. Not sure if the extra butter was to blame or if I mucked up some other way, however I just mixed in a bit more cornflour (I used cornflour instead of tapioca) and it went right. I found it a bit difficult to roll out with a pin due to my dough being not quite right so I just used my fingers to press it out and then cut into rectangles with a knife. So quick and easy and taste just as good as the store ones! Will have to perfect my dough a little bit and thinking of adding some flavouring next time maybe fennel or cumin! Thanks so much
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So thankful. I’ve just shared to Facebook. I’ve eaten the hazelnut version and was going to try to replicate the oatcakes, but you’ve saved me the trouble. May your life be blessed.
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Thank you Barbara
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You just made my day – i’ve also just sat down to try replicate these crackers (the kids love them too – getting to be an expensive habit) and you’be done all the hard work for me!
Thanks!!!
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Aw thanks Amber, enjoy your crackers
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These turned out even better than the 180degrees hazelnut crackers I had! Thank you very much for coming up with this recipe and sharing it.
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you’re welcome Ann
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I have recently been to New Zealand and found these biscuits and loved them. I really liked the Almond ones and wondered if you could just substitute ground almonds for the walnuts. If so, how much, do you think?
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I haven’t tested these biscuits with almonds. Trial and error balancing the less oily almonds with a small increase in the butter should make it work. Make a few small test batches with 10g incremental butter increases to find the perfect formula. The nuts can be swapped gram for gram although you might find toasting the almonds before you process them will vastly improve the flavour. Good luck
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Hi to all you nut crackers, I love the 180 but now love this recipe even more. Sacrilege or not I’ll let you be the judge to my next confession. I used lard instead of butter and they are super yummy just about to try some with beef fat left over from my stock making. I figured that the butter content is so low that using lard or beef fat wont impact too much on my healthy eating desires and fulfils my even bigger desire of zero waste.
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Hi Max, Zero waste excuses and elevates any recipe modification in my opinion. Did you just swap gram for gram?
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Just got given a box of 180 degrees hazelnut oat crackers for Christmas and as I grow my own hazelnuts Googled for a recipe and found yours. Would you roast/toast the hazelnuts first to remove the skins or just whizz them skins and all. Looking forward to making these soon.
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I think it would be best to roast the nuts and remove most of the skin. I haven’t tried making a hazelnut version, buy you may need to add a little extra butter, only 15-20g, to compensate fot the fact that hazelnuts are less oily than walnuts. Good luck with the recipe
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I remember eating the 180 degree walnut crackers while working in NZ but I don’t remember them tasting as good as these crackers turned out (I think the nuts in the store bought had gone stale). I would like to thank you for this terrific recipe! Possibly because the oats I am using are rolled (non-instant) organic oats, the mixture was still very wet after standing for one hour and was quite difficult to roll out and transfer the cut shapes intact, even after adding a few tablespoons of spelt flour. I do like the appearance of uniform shapes (I have a rectangular cutter with fluted edges) but was thinking it might be easier to squish it in my tortilla press and bake it as one sheet and then break it into small pieces or to freeze into a roll and slice while frozen. Love walnuts like you do so your site was a great discovery.
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Hi Caroline the variations in the characteristics of ingredients is extraordinary and it has a huge impact on how they interact together. I only ever buy organic whole oats, not quick cooking so they are probably not to blame. Maybe they needed to be processed a little longer, maybe your butter had a lower butter fat, maybe the water was cooler, maybe the nuts were processed until they released their oil. It took me a few attempts to get the recipe to be manageable, give uniform result and still taste great. I’m glad you persevered and loved the flavour.
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My “dough” was mushy too even after leaving sit. What I did was roll it out between 2 pieces of baking paper, carefully lifted it onto my baking tray, and then gently peeled the top piece of paper off before just cutting squares with a pizza cutter and baking for minimum 30 mins to bake out the moisture. Turned out perfect and yummo! Hope that helps someone who’s not a great problem-solver in the kitchen (like myself).
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Hi Sandra, I made these yesterday and they are delicious! I substituted tapioca flour for rice flour because that’s what I had in the pantry and added a teaspoon of fennel seeds because I just couldn’t resist. Thank you for a great recipe x
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You’re welcome Nancy. I’ll add fennel seed next time, love that flavour..
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I have just returned from NZ and loved the walnut and oat crackers. We were having guests tonight and I wanted to create a similar biscuit. Found your site and made them. I used cornflour instead of tapioca flour and they were perfect. I got compliments all round and hubby said “you won’t ever need to buy cheese crackers again”. Thanks for creating this recipe and sharing it.
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So glad you had success with and enjoyed my oat and walnut crackers Heather, it gives me quite a buzz to get feeback
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Hi ladyredspecs! Thanks so much for creating this recipe. I live in NZ and just can’t justify the cost of my 180 degrees cracker addiction. I had decided to try to make some oat cakes as close as I could to the original recipe, so was stoked to see that someone had got there first!
I thought I should let you and your readers know that these can be made dairy free – my son is lactose intolerant, so it’s always nice to adapt recipes so he can try them. I also don’t have tapioca flour on tap, so a friend suggested swapping it for cornflour/cornstarch, which is a staple in my pantry.
I substituted the ingredients precisely: 40g of dairy-free margarine (I used olivite for any Kiwis reading this), and 30g Edmonds cornflour.
I also was a bit cautious about the boiling water – not wanting to make the margarine oily, as can happen when it melts – so I used recently boiled water instead of completely boiled. The dough was a bit soft, as you explain in a comment above, but to compensate, I used sufficient flour under/over the dough as I rolled it to stop it sticking and baked it for about 40 minutes at 145 degrees C in a fan oven.
These seriously rival the original – I have a packet open as a comparison 🙂 – and my son has already started pulling the oat cakes off the baking rack!
Thanks again!!
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It’s always nice to get positive feedback Elly, thank you. I’m thrilled when a recipe converts successfully to suit an individual’s needs too, that’s what cooking is all about. 😀
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We live in an area famous for walnuts, so I’m going to have to give this recipe a try!
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It’s the most popular recipe on my whole blog Jude, I hope you enjoy them. Nothing bears fresh walnuts!
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Will get hubby to start cracking!!😁
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Hi, I am loving the ‘chilli’ flavour ones which on the 180 packet says “made with oats and almonds”..
Have you tried making with almonds instead of walnuts? Do you think would be same quantities or do differently pls ?
Jenny
(Packet says Almonds(12%) and Chilli Powder(0.3%)
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Hi Jenny, Almonds are not as oily as walnuts so you may need to increase the butter content a little to compensate. I haven’t tried it myself. You can calculate a pretty accurate recipe if the % of each ingredient is given, but be prepared to make a couple of batches to get it right, baking in the domestic enviroment differs enormously from the commercial
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I also feel in love with the oat crackers on our tour of New Zealand in November 2015. Since I do not eat wheat, these were a wonderful discovery. Very disappointing to find that they are not available here in Canada or anywhere close. I can’t believe I ran across this link for the recipe. Thank you so much for recreating and sharing. I made these last weekend and my guests all thought they were wonderful.
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This is so wonderful. We are from Canada and traveled New Zealand from North to South in November 2015. I do not eat wheat and when I found these oat crackers in a little shop in Akaroa I fell in love. I contacted 180 Degrees to see if they export to Canada but no luck. These are truly the best crackers ever and I will attempt to make them from your recipe. Thanks so much for publishing this.
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It’s a pretty straight forward recipe Bonnie, I hope it satisfies your love memory from NZ
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i had exactly the same thoughts as you about the yummy bicuits and went out and got some tapioca flour, we grow our own hazelnuts and walnuts. so finding your recipe of how to put the ingredients together is fantastic, i just made some and they are really good. Thanks so much!!!! if you are ever in queenstown nz look me up Ann
ph 02040390865
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Thanks you so much Ann, getting lovely feedback makes blogging very gratifying.
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Hi – I adore the 180deg oat biscuits, and I’m super keen to give your recipe a go – but I prefer the nutless varieties .. Do you have any advice as to how to modify oat/flour/fat ratios when going nutless? I’d hate to balls up my first attempt 😉
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Hi Zoe, the link will take you to a nutless oatcake recipe, hope that helps. 😀. https://pleasepasstherecipe.com/2014/06/12/pure-and-simple-natural-savoury-oatcakes/
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Hi again – thanks so much for your reply! I tried a couple of modifications (basically just increasing the amount of oats), and found that 130g of oats (without nuts) seems to work just fine. I tried 110g – and while they were delicious, there was perhaps too high a butter to oat ratio. 150g also yielded good results, but then, not quite buttery enough (you see, it’s the magic combination of oats and butter that really make these crackers pop, I think!) .. So – 130g of oats, and everything else as is in your recipe. Also, maybe my oven is a bit weak, but I had to bake them fan-forced for about 35 mins before they started to change colour ..
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Thanks for that Zoe, it’s good to know, glad you cracked the magic formula. Cheers, Sandra
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You rock! I’m addicted to the store bought version. I just made your recipe and am delighted with the result.
May add a few flavour options like rosemary or paprika.
Thanks
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Yay, glad the recipe worked for you, we love ’em…
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I made these second time… But this time they are too crumbly… I substituted tapioca flour with rice flour and butter with coconut oil… What could I be doing wrong? They taste quiet delicious though!!!
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I just made them a second time but this time they are too crumbly….I substituted tapioca flour with rice flour since I didnt have tapioca flour….and butter with coconut oil…the first time around they weren’t crisp and aging slightly crumbly…. What could I be doing wrong? They taste quiet delicious though.
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OK lets talk about the recipe as written first. It’s important to make a fine, flour like meal with the oats and walnuts, it’s also vital that you don’t substitute the boiling water with hot water from the tap as you need the oats to absorb a maximum amount so they become pliable. The resting period is important for this reason. If you follow that exactly and then bake the crackers until they are golden brown, they should work. Of course you must consider different brands of the same ingredient are never exactly the same. Rice flour will also absorb water, while tapioca, like maize flour is more like glue so rice flour and tapioca flour are not interchangeable. Coconut oil lacks the watery buttermilk component of butter. Using a direct swap of quantities in these biscuits firstly reduces the amount of liquid and actually increases the amount of fat. I hope that helps you understand why your second batch of crackers are crumbly.
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I just made these with gluten free flour, they are DELICIOUS!!!! Thank you for creating/sharing this recipe!
Took awhile for mine to crisp up (we moved to a new house with new oven though, have to learn it’s heat level!), next time I might do fan-forced.
They taste so similar to those 180 crackers! I made a double batch so my efforts would be rewarded for awhile longer.
I also just cut them into squares with a knife instead of cutting out circles.
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Hi Rachel, I’m glad my walnut oat crackers recipe was a success for you. Enjoy…
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Do you think it would be ok to freeze the mixture? Am exciting about making them for Christmas. Cheers.
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I haven’t tried freezing the mixture Michelle, but i don’t anticipate there would be any problem. There’s nothing in them that would go watery…
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Sounds yummy.
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Thanks
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Hummmmm just followed the recipe and the mixture looks like very sloppy porridge – is this right?
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No, not at all. Did you process the oats until they were fine and flour like?
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I LIVE here in NZ but I can’t help myself wanting to make my own and was looking for an oatcake recipe to kick off the hazelnut version of these oat cakes and found this! Poor 180, having to publish their ingredients lists hehe. But the weeky shopping bill couldn’t sustain $5.87 a time. I am resting the dough and have two kinds of cheese all ready to try them afterwards. Thank you!
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You’re most welcome. They are $8-$9 here in Oz, ouch! Enjoy….
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Ha! I wanted to make these crackers so I googled the ingredients from the 180 degrees pack and it landed me on this page. This will save me a lot of time and effort. Thanks. Is it an Australian tablespoon or a Kiwi one? I.e is it 4 teaspoons or 3 teaspoons.
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G’day Ted. There are 4 tsps to my tablespoon. We love everything about the 180degree oat and walnut crackers except the price. This recipe isn’t an exact likeness, but it ain’t half bad. Good luck!
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Wow, Sandra! They look fantastic! And that rack? Even cuter than the first time I saw it! 🙂
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Gee thanks Francesca, i was really happy with these crackers. I love the rack too…
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I am SO making these – I love this brand and *may* have brought 6 packets of their biscuits home with me when I was in NZ last year. I buy them occasionally here but they are so $$$!
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So Mel, you know how good 180 degrees are, this recipe is a reasonable facsimile, enjoy….
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I found them at my local IGA this morning Sandra and you’re right, they’re not the cheapest cracker on the shelf! 😉 Couldn’t help myself though and bought a pack just to experience them… I’ve had a cold all this week, so haven’t felt much like cooking lately – nice to have a little treat to help me get better!
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Hope you’re feeling a little less congested Margot, and also I hope the enjoyment factor was worth the outlay for the 180 degrees bikkies, we love them!
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I keep telling myself I need to start making our crackers. It certainly would be nice knowing exactly what is in them! Lovely recipe Sandra. I imagine homemade crackers taste so much better than store bought!
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The production of palm oil is such an enormous enviromental issue I actively steer clear of any products that include it. Unfortunately crackers are high on the list! There are a few varieties available that specify they are made with better alternatives, but making your own is by far the best way to go. These are delicious!
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Absolutely delicious!!… I’d love some right now! 😉
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You’re right Serena, absolutely delicious
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Oat crackers are an NZ thing?! They certainly haven’t made their way over to Oz! I need to start making my own crackers – I buy packets of the things each week but it is so hard finding them without palm oil.
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I have recipes a couple of oat cracker recipes on my site, but there are many delicious simple recipes out there.
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Sounds great. Could I swap out the walnuts for hazelnuts and still get similar results? Walnuts are my least favorite nut!
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There was a hazelnut variety of this biscuit too, very yummy. You might need to add a little more liquid, hazels are less oily but the flavour would be great.
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I love how you started with your tried-and-true oat cake recipe (which are delicious!). The addition of the nuts is a brilliant idea. Does the tapioca flour add to the flavour and does it help to keep the ingredients “cohesive”? I wonder if one could substitute another starch – potato starch or corn flour or arrowroot?
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Yes I think the tapioca flour is for glue. i think any flour would be OK, the amount as the is minimal.
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Just gave the recipe another read through. Are you missing the 125ml water in the ingredient list? Compared this with your original oatcake recipe… Really need to try this with hazelnuts (my altime favourite nut).
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Ooo so sorry, you’re right I did miss the water. All fixed, thanks….
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Tapioca flour a brilliant thought! This recipe looks so good to me. Imagine how delicious with a great blue cheese. Bookmarking.
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They’re delicious, enjoy!
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Great that you succeeded to recreate them. Is the oven fan forced or not?
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I left the fan on, but either way would be OK! it’s important they are toasty brown when done so they are crisp
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