Flapjacks

Monday was an absolutely awful day for me. I won't go into the details, let me just say that I got into a row with my ex-flatmate, felt depressed anyway, had trouble with our electricity provider and my ex-landlord, and the cold that had already announced itself last Wednesday finally kicked in (yay! (not).  I've almost got over it by now). In short: I felt like the whole world had turned on me. 

On days like that, for me, there are only two things to do: (1) Make yourself a nice cup of hot chocolate, snuggle up in a blanket, turn up the heat, and watch a movie, (2) get in the kitchen and bake something. Anything. Preferably biscuits or something like that. 

I went for option 2 (when you have a cold, milk and chocolate aren't that good, anyway) and decided to make flapjacks. Not American flapjacks which, as you might know, are some sort of pancakes, but British flapjacks, in other regions of the world mundanely known as muesli bars.

 

 The basic recipe is, of course, by Sophie, but I made quite a few modifications. You can really get creative with flapjacks. As long as you get the ratio honey/syrup to butter, and honey/syrup/butter to dry ingredients right, you can use whatever you want.

They came out a little more flat (and as a consequence also a lot more brittle) than I intended them to which, of course, was entirely my fault: It said in the recipe that you should use a medium-sized deep baking tray, and that the thickness of the flapjacks depends on the size of the tray. I ignored this and just spread the mixture on a normal (=large), shallow baking tray, thinking that would work. Well, it didn't. The flapjacks mixture spread about 2 inches on each side, something that a smaller, deeper baking tray would propably have prevented.

 

No matter how they look, they taste de-li-cious and make a nice snack for breaks between classes. Or for tea. Or breakfast. Or whenever.

Flapjacks

(Basic recipe by Sophie Dahl)

Makes for 12-24 pieces, depending on how large a baking tray you use

 

2 Tbsp runny honey

2 Tbsp golden syrup

2 Tbsp black treacle (if you don't like it, you can leave out the treacle and substitute 1 Tbsp runny honey and golden syrup respectively)

150 g/2.25 cups butter (Sophie uses salted, I don't)

150 g/1.5 cups porridge oats

75 g/0.5 cup dried cranberries

50 g/0.5 cup chocolate chips

100 g/1.5 cups julienned and flaked almonds, mixed

Preheat the oven to 180° C/350° F.

Grease a medium sized, deep baking tray. Remember: The size of the tray will determine the thickness of the flapjacks.

Melt the honey, golden syrup, treacle and butter in a heavy-bottomed pan over a low heat. Stir until combined, then remove from the heat.

Mix all the dry ingredients, then add them to the molten butter and syrup.

Spread the mixture onto the baking tray and smoothe it down.

Put into the oven and bake for 25-30 minutes.

Cut the flapjacks into pieces as long as they're still hot. Allow to cool, then take them out of the tray and store in a dry, cool place.

They crumble quite a lot which annoyed me at first until I came up with the idea to sprinkle the crumbs on yogurt and have that for breakfast. Yum!