We should cocoa is one! Happy Birthday! To celebrate the first birthday of the best chocolate blogging event out there, Chele at Chocolate Teapot has invited us all to create a tasty chocolate treat that we would like to see at the virtual first birthday party. I can't believe it's been a year since the first we should cocoa was announced - how time flies. I do remember being very excited about the challenge though, and very pleased that the first ingredient was raspberries - I love raspberries and made them into this delicious cake.
It took me a while, but I eventually decided on these flapjacks. I think they'd be great to take to a party - lots of other people have made cake for the party so I fancied something a little different. This recipe is based on Dan Lepard's Halva flapjack, a recipe I have seen lots and lots of bloggers making. You can find the original recipe here. I'm still not sure about using tahini so I decided to adapt the recipe to suit what I had available (hello ginormous jar of peanut butter) and what I fancied eating (mmm, cranberries and chocolate). Dan says that the use of tahini in this recipe allows less butter to be used and that when heated tahini goes fudgy. Now, clearly tahini is made from sesame seeds and peanut butter from peanuts, but both seeds and nuts are high in fats and have the same sort of paste consistency so I was hoping that using PB wouldn't lead me far wrong with the recipe.
Foodycat noted that the recipe needed to be cooked for longer than Dan stated and that hers was still very gooey in the middle after the stated time. She also recommended using the full amount of oats. So with these recommendations in mind, here is my adapted version of Dan's original recipe.
Chocolate Peanut Butter and Cranberry Flapjack
Ingredients
100g butter
75g light muscovado sugar
200g condensed milk
75g peanut butter (mine was a crunchy 100% peanut version)
50g honey
100g dried cranberries
100g chocolate, chopped
225g oats
Method
- Grease and line an 8"/20cm square tin with baking parchment. Preheat the oven to gas 4/180C.
- Melt the butter, sugar and condensed milk in a saucepan until hot and the sugar has dissolved.
- Remove from the heat and add the PB and honey and then the dried cranberries. Mix well.
- Add in the oats and mix fairly well, then add the chopped chocolate and mix until everything is evenly distributed.
- Spoon into the prepared tin, smoothing the surface and bake until pale golden. Dan states 15-20 minutes, I found mine needed at least 30.
- Remove from tin and allow to cool, but cut whilst still slightly warm if possible.
Notes
- I added the chocolate along with the oats rather than earlier to stop it all melting into one chocolate blob. This way I reckon the oats have taken the heat out of the mixture. But don't hang around while you're mixing it.
- I cut mine when cold and it was still soft enough to do this.- My house smelled deliciously of hot peanut butter and chocolate while these were cooking. A particularly delicious combination...
Wow, these were fab! They were lovely and fudgy in the middle and the combination of chocolate, peanut butter and dried cranberries was like eating a particularly decadent version of one of my favoured sandwiches, peanut butter and jam. Mmmm! The cranberries were great at providing just a little tartness and the chocolate was, well, chocolate - i.e. delicious! I will make these again and wish I had made them earlier! I think that they would be particularly good at a party (especially if you want to pretend that the oats are good for the little children attending!) so although they're not flashy or over the top, they are my submission.
If you want to see my other submissions to We should Cocoa here they are:
September - Chocolate raspberry cake (raspberries)
October - Triple chocolate and hazelnut crunchies (hazelnuts)
November - Chocolate caramel cupcakes with caramel buttercream (caramel)
December - Chocolate date crumble bar (dates)
January - Chocolate box cake (leftovers)
February - (tea)
March - Chocolate cupcakes with chocolate lime buttercream (lime)
April - (marzipan)
May - Chocolate roulade with black forest buttercream (roulades)
June - White chocolate and strawberry muffins (strawberries)
July - (apricot)
August - Chocolate rose rice pudding (rose)
Hmm, must try harder this year to complete all the challenges! Can't wait to see what's in store for us all!
17 comments:
How absolutely divine! I think I would prefer peanut butter to tahini in these, actually. And the cranberries are just what it needs to add a kick.
Mega Flapjack is genius!
Ummm chocolate and peanut butter - one of my fav combos!
Peanut butter and chocolate is always such an amazing combination, isn't it? :)
peanut butter and chocolate is my favourite combo. These look just divine, I may even make some tomorrow.
This sounds a really tasty adaptation of the original recipe.
These look wonderful. I adore oeanut butter and the added choc chips and cranberries sound a wonderful addition.
wonder how peanut butter and condensed milk would go together - loved these with tahini but agree with foodycat's comments about them being quite soft - I am happy to hear they work well with choc chips as I think that chocolate would be great
Woo hoo! I love flapjacks so these babies are a very welcome addition to our virtual birthday party! Thanks so much for bringing them along, the flavour combo is so current ;0)
And well done for participating in some many of the WSC events, sterling effort I reckon.
Delighted you are bringing these delicious treats to the party!!!!
Foodycat - the cranberries were definitely a good addition!
Dom - thanks!
MissCakeBaker - it's a good one isn't it!
Celia - it is indeed, but one I haven't explored enough!
Janice - I hope you do - they're lovely!
Suelle - well, I haven't tried the original, but these are good!
Katie - thank you!
Johanna - the chocolate was good. I liked the peanut butter, but I guess tahini is better for you with Sylvia to consider.
Chele - I'm glad these will be welcome at the party :-) Looking forward to the coming challenges!
BVG - thanks!
Delicious - I'm really excited to see the number of different recipes springing up using peanut butter as I love it in baked goods.
nomnomnom!!!
All my favorite things in one? Chocolate, peanut butter and cranberries.....Yumm:) I'm in HEaven
Ohh, I missed that Dan Lepard recipe- but I have a whole jar of tahini AND peanut butter in the fridge, what a cracking tip! I'm so pleased they tasted so great C!
I love the look of these flapjacks so much so that I printed off your recipe and ran home to make them. Unfortunately the children saw the peanut butter come out of the cupboard and hide it till I had promised that I wouldn't put it in so instead we had chocolate and cranberry flapjack I increased the butter but found I then had to add more oats as the mixture was too wet. Darn those children I will make this using the peanut butter but maybe when said children are at their nanny's for the weekend. Thank you for the recipe though xx
Fabulous flapjacks C. Just love the idea of using peanut butter and can't wait to give it a try. I was a trifle surprised you liked peanut butter nuts? But I can imagine it worked really well. My tahini & white choc version were a great hit with everyone, suspect yours would be even more so. Thanks so much for joining us for the party as well as sticking with us through some tough challenges.
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