Cherry Bites

Cream together 4oz of margarine or butter and 5oz of caster sugar, mix in an egg, beaten, 10oz self raising flour (or in our case, plain flour and 1tsp baking powder) and a tsp of vanilla essence. Mix until smooth, then weigh into half ounce balls (these made the small ones, and we were destined to make way more than the intended 20, so we made ours a bit bigger). Roll each one in porridge oats, then put onto a greased baking tray, flatten with a fork, and add a quarter of a cherry (we went mad, and used half) Bake in the centre of a moderate oven (gas mark 4, 350F or 175C) until golden brown. Or Gordon Brown, as my two insisted. ('Is it Gordon Brown yet?' 'No, it's barely even Peter Mandelson')
These were whipped up on Monday afternoon, as Daddy had the pastor and church secretary coming round for a meeting while we were out at Guides. They ate them, so they must have been OK!