Flapjack Recipe

A few years ago I found a recipe on the MSE forums for Hob Nob Biscuits.  I wrote it down and I've used it ever since.  Sadly I can't remember the name of the poster, but needless to say I'm very grateful for this recipe as it works for me every time and I nearly always have the ingredients available.

Recipe:

8oz Butter
2 tbsp hot water
2 tbsp golden syrup (I've used honey in the past if I've run out of golden syrup)
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

I melt the butter in a pan, and add the golden syrup and hot water, when it is all melted together I add the bicarbonate of soda.  It froths up quite a lot.  

While it is melting I get the dry ingredients ready:

8oz Porridge Oats
8oz Self Raising Flour
5oz Sugar (the original recipe suggests 8oz, but I find 5oz is plenty)

Once the pan of melted ingredients is ready I add it to the dry mixture, stir until combined and then I put the delicious (you've been warned) uncooked mixture spread out onto a fairly high sided baking tray and bake at about 180 degrees for about 10 minutes until golden on top.  Let it cool for while and then cut into flapjack slices (the original recipe suggests making this into individual biscuits, but I find this easier).

This recipe is delicious as it is, but I do like to try and add fruit/other good stuff to as many of the sweet recipes that I can, so I've made a number of variations to this recipe that I think work very well.  Below are some Chocolate Orange Flapjacks:

• Chocolate Orange - swap 1oz of Self Raising flour for cocoa powder and use orange juice instead of hot water
• Raisins - I've found you can just add these into the mixture, up to about 2-3oz or a couple of handfuls without it affecting the recipe at all.
• Seeded Flapjacks - again I've discovered you can pretty much add whatever seeds you have to the mixture without it having an impact on the structure of the flapjack
• Chocolate Cranberry - swap 1oz of self raising flour for cocoa powder and add dried cranberries to the mixture
• Spiced Orange - add a tsp-ish of mixed spice to the dry ingredients and the zest of 1 orange to the melted ingredients, this is my current favourite.
• Ginger - add a tsp+ ground ginger to the dry ingredients
• Lemon, Poppy Seed and Coconut - add the zest of a lemon, swap the hot water for the juice of a lemon and add 2+tbsp of poppy seeds and 2tbsp of dessicated coconut.

Here are the Lemon, Poppy Seed and Coconut Flapjacks:

A while ago I can remember seeing a coconut mocha combination somewhere and thinking I must have a try of those flavours together someday.  I'm sure nuts would work well too, ground, chopped or I think you'd get away with peanut butter instead of the syrup, but I use these for packed lunches a lot and due to allergies in school you can't have anything with nuts in a packed lunch.

And here are some Orange Spiced Flapjacks with the Lemon Poppy Seed and Coconut Flapjacks:

Yum.

And just because Valentines Day is coming up, here is a simple little heart craft too.  Draw a heart (I drew around a cookie cutter) and then use the eraser on the end of a pencil to stamp on the circles.  I used a variety of ink pads I had hanging around.

You can see I was still in orange, red and pink mode after making my Mixed Stitch Cushion Cover.