Sunday afternoon often turns into a bit of a bakefest here at The Madhouse. Today, spotting a few blackening bananas in the fruit bowl, I decided to rustle up a banana bread to use them up. While that was cooking, I had a look through my baking cupboard to see what was hanging about and could do with using up too. I spotted a half-used bag of porridge oats and suddenly remembered seeing a blog post over at the White Lily Green blog for a Flapjack Challenge. Perfect !
I've made flapjacks before but wanted to check the proportions in the standard recipe and knew that there was one on the Sainsbury's blogpost that we could use as the basic recipe to tweak. Unfortunately, my internet connection wasn't working so I had to improvise and make up a recipe as we went along. It could have been a total disaster but they are actually the best flapjacks I've ever made - lovely and moist, packed with flavour and with absolutely no added sugar.
OK, here's our recipe :
Healthy Apple & Cranberry Flapjacks
Ingredients :
100g butter
10 tbsp runny honey
100g dried cranberries
2 apples, grated
200g oats
Melt the butter. You could do this is in a saucepan over a low heat but I prefer doing this in the microwave - it's quicker, there's no risk of burning it and there are no flames or saucepan handles for inquisitive little kitchen helpers to touch. Stir in the runny honey.
Add the oats and the cranberries and mix well.
Coarsely grate two apples - I didn't even bother peeling them, figuring it's all extra fibre ! - and stir them into the oaty mixture.
Look out for cheeky toddlers who keep pinching spoonfuls whenever your back is turned.
Closely followed by big sisters ! They loved it so much, I'd be tempted to serve this up uncooked as a breakfast alternative to porridge !
I didn't have enough left to cover the bottom of the tray after they'd finished pinching spoonfuls of the uncooked mixture so I may have to increase the quantities next time (or keep the Madhouse Mini-testers out of the kitchen) !
After about 20 minutes in a moderate oven (I put ours at the bottom of the oven while the banana bread was cooking at the top, so you may need to reduce the cooking time if they become golden brown more quickly in the top of the oven). The cooked flapjack was incredibly soft and moist and I thought there was no way it would ever hold together as bars when I tried to cut it, figuring we'd have to eat it with a spoon instead.
I cut it into squares in the tin but left it to cool completely without moving it while I gave the kids their bath. Half an hour later, I used a fish slice to gently lift them out of the tin and was amazed to see that not a single one broke apart. The secret is obviously letting them cool completely.
The honey, cranberries and apple make them lovely and sweet, even without adding any sugar, and they are incredibly moist and soft. The only problem is, they all disappeared so quickly, my plan of using them as lunchbox snacks next week has gone out of the window !
Disclosure : This is my entry to the Sainsbury's Flapjack Challenge.
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if you made it for breakfast and gave them it as is I doubt they would eat it!!
ReplyDeleteMmmmm this recipe looks yummy!
ReplyDeleteThese look delicious!
ReplyDelete