Easter Flapjack

Nothing annoys me more than open packets of ingredients in the cupboard, so when I had a good rummage in the kitchen and found open porridge oats I couldn’t resist making something with them. Limited ingredients and an unwillingness to leave the warmth of my parents’ house to buy more meant I was stuck with something simple: flapjack.

I had a quick read of my mum’s Home Economics exercise book from when she was at school and after marvelling at the copious amounts of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, along with the scathing comments in red pen about her lack of detail and generally forgetting lots of important points, I managed to decipher a basic flapjack recipe. It received 6.5/10 so I knew it must be doable and decided to give it a go. Seeing as it is Good Friday, I added a packet of Mini Eggs in order to give the recipe an Easter twist. If you’d prefer fruit/chocolate, then add extra ingredients as you see fit. This flapjack can be whipped up in next to no time and is a simple, classic treat that’s perfect with a cup of tea in the afternoon.

As with the majority of my recipes, enjoy this in moderation… For such a ‘wholesome’ and traditional cake (or biscuit? Can anyone confirm?) flapjack contains a lot of calories, so beware when reaching for a second piece!

Ingredients:

5oz unsalted butter

Pinch of salt

5oz soft light brown sugar

4 tbsp golden syrup

10oz rolled porridge oats

1 packet Mini Eggs

Method:

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius and line a square baking tin with baking parchment. Ensure the baking parchment extends over the top of the tin so it’ll be easier to remove the flapjack once baked.

Melt the butter. Stir in the sugar and golden syrup, followed by the oats.

In a food processor, briefly blitz the Mini Eggs. The majority of them will remain whole but with chunks out of the shells. This is fine, as long as there are several tablespoons of a chocolaty/sugary powder as a result. Stir the Mini Eggs into the oat mixture. 

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin, pressing lightly into the corners and evening out the surface.

Transfer to the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown and bubbling slightly. The mixture should have risen a little and the surface neatened out. Leave to cool in the tin and after 15 minutes place the flapjack on a chopping board and cut into manageable pieces/slabs depending on how much you want to eat in one sitting! I then transferred it back into the tin to cool completely, as I found keeping it in the tin maintained the shape a lot better. It can be different each time, so just see how it goes if you make it yourself and transfer to a wire rack/keep it in the tin as you feel is appropriate. 

My mum’s recipe said to “serve on a plate with [a] doiley” (the teacher added it as my mum clearly had no intention of serving it properly…) 

When I made plain flapjack yesterday I turned the house upside down looking for the right presentation equipment and managed to do as instructed. Here’s plain flapjack served in the 1960s way, on top of a golden doiley.

However Easter Flapjack can only be served one way; piled high on a plate and covered in more Mini Eggs. Enjoy!