james holden

Since it was pretty bad weather this afternoon, we decided to make some flapjack. It’s also Oliver’s birthday party tomorrow so it’ll be nice to have some to put out then (if there’s any left, of course!).

We put some melted chocolate on top because it didn’t appear to have quite enough sugar or calories in the standard recipe.

Ingredients:

Tools:

• Scales, if you’re fussy
• A medium saucepan
• A spoon to mix the ingredients
• Some greaseproof paper
• An oven, pre-heated to 175 degrees celsius (gas mark 4)
• A flat tin
• A blunt knife, to cut it up with

Here’s all the ingredients together. The chocolate isn’t shown because it was an afterthought.

First, melt the butter, sugar and golden syrup together over a low heat. Keep stirring the mixture while the butter melts. You don’t need to melt the sugar.

Then, mix in the oats. Make sure all the oats are evenly covered in the melted ingredients.

Turn the mixture out into a flat tin lined with greaseproof paper. Press the mixture into the tin. We didn’t quite make enough mixture, so rather that spread it thinly, we folded the paper up to make a wall.

Cook the flapjack for about 25 minutes. It’s not particularly time-critical though.

When it’s had 20 minutes, melt the chocolate in a glass/pyrex dish in the microwave. The best technique for this is to melt it in 20 second bursts, turning it over and round with a spoon until it’s fully melted. By the time the flapjack has had 25 minutes, the chocolate should be ready to put on.

Carefully spread the melted chocolate over the flapjack while both are still hot, being careful not to disturb the surface of the flapjack.

Use a stiff spatula or a blunt knife to press down into the flapjack so that it can be broken up into squares to serve.

Make sure it’s fully cooled before removing it from the tin. It’s nice if the flapjack is soft, but if it’s too soft, just keep it in the fridge.