Tuesday 7 August 2007

English Flapjack

Today's recipe is dedicated to a couple of posters at the Motley Fool, who requested it.

Until I came to Britain, I thought "flapjack" was an American style pancake made with buttermilk - a bit like an overgrown pikelet. Here, however, "flapjack" means an oat-based bar, welded together with sugar and butter. It's my absolute favourite sweet thing.

This is a really easy recipe to double or triple. For portion control reasons, I tend to make mine in muffin pans. Traditionally, they're made in a square or rectangular cake tin and sliced when warm (see Note A below). Each flapjack is 2.9 Weight Watchers points.

Ingredients

6oz/175g Oats
4oz/100g butter
6 level tablespoons soft, dark muscovado/molasses sugar
1 tablespoon Golden Syrup or Maple Syrup


Method

1) Preheat oven to 180 C /350 F.

2) Melt butter in saucepan, add sugar and Golden/Maple Syrup and stir until dissolved. Remove from heat and stir in oats.

3) Spoon evenly into 12 greased muffin pans and bake for 8 minutes.

4) Allow to cool in pans until they start to harden. Turn out and allow to go cold before serving. (Note, if you allow them to get too hard in the pans, they'll stick. But if they're turned out when too soft, they'll crumble!)

5) Store in fridge

Notes:

A) You can also bake them together in a well greased, non-stick, rectangular cake pan for 20 minutes, remove from oven and score into 12-15 bars. Allow to cool and then turn out. I've found that they are harder to turn out without breaking or sticking to the pan this way

B) If you can't get Golden Syrup, use pure Maple Syrup. They'd work well with honey or molasses ("treacle") too.

C) Do NOT use margarine. These taste so much better with real butter.



- Pam

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