If you remember one recipe from year 8 food tech that isn’t spag bol from a jar, it’s probably flapjack. You already had most of the ingredients in your house, so you didn’t have to quickly run by mum that you had a practical tomorrow and had forgotten to add your list to the weekly shop. Not only, that but even if you were low on porridge oats, you could easily buy a value bag for 30p from the Tesco on the way to school. It’s the recipe that requires so little effort, it’s basically made during those two minutes on the hob, and so that for the remaining 30 when it’s baking in the oven you can forget all about it.

The recipe below requires a bit more effort if you want to put an autumnal twist on flapjack to celebrate the clocks going back, but if you prefer to keep it simple, leave out the apple and cinnamon, or substitute them for nuts or chocolate chips.

120g unsalted butter

75g Demerara sugar

220g porridge oats

4 tbsp golden syrup

1 tsp cinnamon

1-2 medium-sized apples, diced

– Preheat the oven to 180°. Measure out butter, sugar and syrup in a pan and place on the hob, turning it to medium heat. Stir the ingredients slowly until all of the butter has melted and incorporated itself with the syrup and sugar. Take the pan off-heat.

– While the syrup mixture is cooling down, peel and dice the apple into small chunks or thin slices, depending on how you want the texture. Add the apple, oats and cinnamon to the pan and stir until the oats are covered in the syrup.

– Grease an 18cm cake tin with butter before carefully spooning the flapjack mix in. Press mix down firmly into the tin so that the final bake doesn’t crumble when removed. Put the cake tin into the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the flapjack looks firm and golden.

– Allow the flapjack to cool for ten minutes, or until the top is warm to touch, before cutting into slices and removing from the cake tin.

 

 

Georgia Ryan

(Image: Belleau Kitchen)