Mango and Chocolate Flapjack

Sorry about the silence round here, I've been a bit preoccupied of late. However, a little while ago I volunteered to take part in a blogger ingredients swap, hosted by Ruth of Makey Cakey. Ruth partnered up all of the participants and then we got in touch with each other, discussed likes/dislikes and allergies and then sent off a parcel containing swap ingredients. 

I am a little late posting this, as Ruth asked us to blog about our makes by the 30th November but hopefully it'll be worth waiting for.

I was paired up with Jono, Ruth's husband, who blogs about his adventures with four ingredient cookery here. Check out his inventive recipes and find out what he made with my parcel to him. My swap ingredients were fab - some lovely fudge and a packet of dried fairtrade mango. I have to confess that it seemed a crime to bake with such special fudge so I took it in to work and we all shared it - it was very well received, and utterly delicious.

For the mango I decided to make mango and chocolate flapjacks:

Mango and Chocolate Flapjack
Ingredients
175g butter
120g light muscovado sugar
200g golden syrup
350g rolled oats
150g dark chocolate, chopped into fairly big pieces
60g dried mango, chopped

Method

- Preheat the oven to gas 4/180C. Grease and line an 8x12" (20x30cm) rectangular tin with parchment paper. 

- Melt the butter, sugar and syrup and when all gooey and melted, add the oats and mix well. 

- Add the chocolate and mango, mixing as quickly as possible because the warm oats will melt the chocolate, spoon into the tin, spread out and bake for around 30 minutes until golden.

- Allow to cool slightly then mark into pieces.

Enjoy!

The chocolate melted as I was mixing the flapjack before baking it, so there weren't any chocolate chunks, but the taste was still there, and still good. This went down very well indeed - I received many compliments on it, so thank you Jono for the delicious ingredients you sent, they were very much enjoyed.

Black Bottom Triple Chocolate Flapjacks

I love a good piece of flapjack (you can see more of my flapjack recipes here). There are lots and lots of recipes around for flapjack, ranging from the genuinely-good-for-you to the downright-decadently-delicious. When I was deciding how to give this batch of flapjacks a different twist I quickly remembered that this week is Chocolate Week (major sponsor Divine Chocolate - a fabulous company with great ethics and great products that I am always happy to champion). There is some really interesting info about chocolate there too. I am definitely going to browse their site for more chocolate knowledge.

So that was my decision made for me - chocolate was the way to go. I wanted to really ramp up the chocolate decadence in these flapjacks and so I decided to use cocoa powder (why have I never come across flapjacks made with cocoa powder before now? Great idea) and two different types of chocolate - white chocolate to contrast with the dark cocoa layer and butterscotch milk chocolate in the plain layer because it's downright delicious. These are definitely towards the decadent end of the scale. Oats, chocolate, butter, deliciousness. What's not to like.

Seeing the layers clearly

Triple Chocolate Flapjacks
Ingredients
125g butter
90g light muscovado sugar
150g golden syrup
260g oats
2 tbsp cocoa powder
50g white chocolate, chopped
50g butterscotch milk chocolate, chopped (or any other chocolate you fancy)

Method

- Grease and line an 8"/20cm square tin with baking parchment. Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4.

- Melt the butter, sugar and golden syrup over a low heat.

- When melted, add the oats and mix well to combine.

- Measure half of the mixture (this is about 300g) into a separate small bowl.

- To the mixture remaining in the pan add the cocoa powder and mix well until the colour is dark and even.

- Add the white chocolate to the dark oat mixture and very briefly mix to combine - you need to be quick because the white chocolate will start to melt.

- Spoon the mixture into the tin and level out as best you can - a bit tricky as the cocoa powder makes the mixture very thick and sticky.

- To the remaining plain oat mixture (in the bowl) add your milk chocolate of choice and again, mix briefly bearing in mind that the chocolate will start to melt quickly.

- Spoon onto the mixture already in the tin and level out.

- Bake for 25-30 minutes until the flapjack is golden on the top.

- Alllow to cool in the tin and after about 20 minutes, slice into pieces - this is much easier when the flapjack is warm than when it has gone completely cold.

- Enjoy!

Other flapjack recipes you might enjoy...
White Chocolate Cherry and Cinnamon Flapjack
Rudolph's Flapjacks
Chocolate Peanut Butter Flapjacks
Treacle and Ginger Flapjack

These are a firm, chewy (very chocolatey) flapjack, not a soft chewy one but they are definitely not crunchy. I like a bit of chewy body to my flapjacks, and these were well received by those who tried them.

I am also entering these into Fleur's Challenge Flapjack. I have no doubt there will be many delicious entries, far more creative than mine, but I'm going for the decadence angle!

The Great British Bake Off, Flapjacks, a Plaited Loaf and a Review

I was recently contacted and asked whether I would like to receive a copy of the Great British Bake Off book to review. Not being one to say no to the offer of a lovely free new book, and being a book which is perfectly in-keeping with the theme of my blog I jumped at the chance. Shortly after, a thump was heard on the doormat and the book was in my possession. Actually, that's a bit of artistic license... what really happened was that I heard the postman trying his very best to shove the book unceremoniously through the letterbox and went and quickly opened the door to relieve him of it before my letterbox was broken. Anyhow, I have my copy which is the important part.

 Ginger flapjacks

I've been enjoying watching the bake off as it has progressed on the television, but don't worry, there are no spoilers here - I haven't really been keeping up to date, what with one thing and another - which is also why it has taken me so long to get round to writing this review of the book. 

6-braided plait

As you may have surmised from the altercation the book had with my letterbox, it's pretty hefty. 320 pages with many, many delicious looking recipes. As in previous years, the majority of the recipes are by Linda Collister, an author whose recipes I enjoy making and has my trust. At the beginning of each chapter is the 'Showstopping Challenge' recipe - a basic recipe is given and then variations on that theme getting more difficult. For example - in the biscuit chapter the basic gingerbread is used to make Gingerbread People (easy), Iced Stars (takes a little time) and then Winter Woodland Cottage (needs a little skill). There are also technical challenge recipes from Paul and Mary throughout the book along with the best of the contestants recipes from the bake off. There are also really helpful pages devoted to 'Showstopping Techniques' such as icing and stacking a cake and chocolate ribbons and bows in the cake chapter, crimping and decorating in the pie chapter and piping meringue swirls in the desserts chapter, among many, many more.

5 braided plait

The chapters of the book are *Cakes *Biscuits *Breads & Sweet Dough *Tarts *Pies *Desserts *Puddings and then finally *The Basics. The majority of the recipes have illustrations (just), and generally the book is beautifully photographed, so it's a little irritating to find that some of the recipes are not illustrated. I counted 108 recipes, of which 37 do not have an illustration (just over a third of them). I wonder if this is down to budget but I wouldn't think so - there are plenty of full page 'lifestyle' shots and shots of the contestants working. It does seem a pity to have so many recipes without any idea of what they should look like when a small photo on the corner of the page would have been more than adequate for some. I do think it's important for the styling of the book that there are 'lifestyle' and contestant photos, but it seems to be at the expense of the recipe shots here.

Ginger flapjacks

For my recipes I decided to choose something really easy, and something that required a little more time. I decided to make the 'Ruby Jacks', a variation on flapjack. The recipe was easy to follow, but used a rather smaller proportion of oats to the recipes for flapjack I usually use, resulting in a rather spectacular rising of the mixture in the oven (I didn't know flapjacks could puff up like these did) and subsequent sinking and the resulting flapjack was very buttery and soft indeed rather than being substantial and chewy. They were very nice, but I'm not quite sure where the name 'Ruby' comes from - the introduction to the recipe suggests that this is due to the ruby hint given by the inclusion of the stem ginger (mmm, ginger, I am such a ginger fiend), but given that stem ginger is yellow(ish) I can't really see why they'd be red(dish) and they weren't! Still tasty though.

Braiding and baking bread

My other recipe was Paul's technical challenge from the Bread episode - a braided bread. The recipe and full instructions can be found on the BBC Food website, so I won't reproduce them in full. The dough itself was straightforward to make - just a simple white dough so I was more interested in the actual braiding process, having never done this before (but having meant to for a very long time - Celia has a lot to answer for I think!). I know that my loaf wouldn't have passed muster with the master of bread - firstly I couldn't get his instructions for an eight stranded plait to work for me (and I haven't had chance to try with a bit of appropriately sized rope - I just don't have that sort of thing hanging around in my house!) and secondly when I baked and cut my bread I had clearly used too much flour to keep the strands separate - they were still visible in the cross section of the loaf. The bread tasted fine - plain white bread but I'm annoyed I couldn't follow the instructions (I'm sure this is my fault, although if the bake-off contestants were given the same instructions I'm not surprised they found it tricky!). In the end I resorted to a different baking book, Bread, by Jeffrey Hamelman as I knew it had some alternative braiding instructions in there and I successfully followed his instructions for a five stranded braid and then cut my remaining three strands in half to give six short ones and made a six-strand braid too. Celia's right though - it is fairly addictive and I'm going to give it a go again (perhaps when I have more time and give myself a chance to read through the instructions for braiding first!)

Jeffrey Hamelman's 'Bread' with braiding instructions

I know I am biased because I am a keen buyer of cookbooks, and baking books too but I would recommend this one. I was unsure as to whether it would just be full of 'Showstoppers' that are unachievable, but actually, there are loads of recipes in there that I'd like to make, ranging from very basic to rather special. There are far too many to list here, but I'd really like to try the 'Chess Cake', the 'Caramel Layer Cake', the 'Camembert and Quince Flatbreads', the 'Double Crust Pear Pie' and Mary's 'Creme Caramel' among many others. 

Because these loaves are plaited (or braided) I'm entering them into this month's alphabakes, where the letter is P. Alphabakes is a monthly challenge hosted by Caroline of Caroline Makes and Ros of The More than Occasional Baker. The letter for this month is P and the host is Caroline.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book to review. All views expressed are my own and aside from the book I did not receive payment.

White Chocolate, Cherry and Cinnamon Picnic Flapjack

I think I had been dreaming of picnics and sunshine when I made these - dreaming in the middle of the downpours! These would be perfect to pack up and take on a visit to a river - plenty of energetic jumping and splashing and a little swimming followed by a picnic sandwich lunch (with my cousins to eat the spring onions and prawn cocktail flavour crisps that seemed obligatory in my childhood) and a good slice of flapjack.

These aren't too sweet, and are a more crumbly flapjack than my standard recipe which is chewier and has a much higher proportion of golden syrup and sugar than these. But don't worry, the delicious creamy white chocolate topping adds the sweetness and sugar hit you expect and need from a good flapjack.

Before topping with chocolate

I've never tried topping a flapjack with chocolate before, but I don't know why, because these are utterly delicious. The creaminess of the chocolate marries perfectly with the slightly crumbly flapjack, and the cherries add chewiness, little sweet pockets of cherry goodness (I'm sure I've mentioned how much I love glace cherries before!). Then just a little hint of spice in the form of cinnamon. I'm not always a fan of cinnamon - it's often used with too heavy a hand, but here, that hint just works. 

I think next time I'll use more white chocolate to top the flapjack, there was probably just enough, but only just. I'd recommend 200g or even 250g depending on how thick you want it. Try it, you'll not be disappointed.

White Chocolate, Cherry and Cinnamon Picnic Flapjack
Ingredients
150g butter
75g golden syrup
35g light muscovado sugar
225g oats
75g finely grated carrot
100g glace cherries, halved or quartered depending on size
1/4tsp ground cinnamon

For the topping
150g white chocolate
40g butter

Method
- Preheat the oven to gas 3/170C. Grease and line an 8"/20cm square tin.
- Melt the butter, syrup and sugar.
- Add the carrot and cherries, mix, then add the oats and cinnamon and mix well to combine. Don't worry if it's a little crumbly.
- Tip into your prepared tin and level off.
- Bake around 40 minutes until light golden brown.
- Remove and allow to cool, but leave in the tin.

For the topping, gently melt the white chocolate and butter over a pan of hot water. When the flapjack is cool, spread the chocolate over the top. You will have to be quite careful to distribute it evenly, there isn't much spare.

When the chocolate has set, remove from the tin and cut into pieces of the size you desire.

Rudolph's flapjacks

Well, it seems that I am finally feeling more festive (not that I've got things sorted or organised - far from it but hey!) and anyway how could you resist such a name for this lovely treat? Why are they Rudolph's flapjacks? Well, because the contain carrot of course! Don't worry, this isn't an unwelcome intrusion - just think of carrot cake (and we all know how delicious that is!) and you'll be working on the right lines.

I came across the recipe when I was browsing on the BBC Good Food website, you can find it here. I would never have spotted it in the actual magazine - it's hidden away as a tiny little list of instructions on a page containing five other ideas for quick bakes for the holiday season. It really caught my attention though, because I had all the ingredients in and haven't made flapjack for a while now. I'm a big fan of carrot cake and these are all the flavours of carrot cake in an easy-to-make flapjack form. Sometimes you just see a recipe and know it's going to be right - this was one of those times. 

I made only minor changes - the zest of two clementines instead of one orange, a tsp of mixed spice instesad of the specified cinnamon, because I prefer the more rounded flavour of mixed spice over cinnamon, and I left out the seeds because I'm not keen on them. I also soaked my apricots (which were very dry) in the juice of one of the clementines, about 40ml, for about 20 minutes whilst I did other things. I grated my carrots finely as I didn't want them to be too prominent. I also wanted flapjacks that weren't as deep, so I decided to use an 8"/20cm tin, rather than the specified 18cm tin.

Edited to add: as Suelle points out in her comment, 2 carrots is a bit vague. I forgot to weigh the ones I actually used, but finding two similar ones, they weighed 100g before peeling. I hope that's more helpful if you're planning on making these (and do, it's really worth it!).

I baked mine for at least 45 minutes in spite of using a larger tin. I just kept checking them until they were a light brown on the top. Even so, they're very fragile so be careful turning them out - I wasn't careful enough and my flapjack broke in half.

Oh so delicious - so moist in a really good way and the combination of flavours from the dried apricot, orange zest, spice and oats is just divine. You can't taste the carrot, but I'm certain it adds to the moistness of the flapjack. As I suspected, these fell apart a little on eating, but actually, this is no bad thing. I will definitely be making these again, they were so easy to put together, feel so festive and are the perfect sustaining snack for the busy times leading up to Christmas but when you don't want yet another mince pie or chocolate from the tin (yes, I believe it actually is possible to have too many mince pies and chocolates!!!) I think my colleagues must have agreed because these disappeared with record speed!

I'm submitting these for the December Teatime Treats challenge, hosted by Karen of Lavender and Lovage and Kate of What Kate Baked, two lovely ladies with lovely blogs! This month's host is Kate and she has rather appropriately chosen Christmas as the theme.

I think this is a great bake for Christmas, and perfect for the children to leave out either for Father Christmas or Rudolph - after all they both have a busy night on the 24th December, delivering all those presents (and I'll be tracking Santa here), so a good sustaining piece of flapjack would be very welcome and make a change from all the mince pies and carrots they usually get :-)

We Should Cocoa - Chocolate Peanut Butter Mega Flapjack

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!

Raspberry oat traybake

These were a very quick and easy bake that I spotted in a recent issue of BBC Good Food magazine. They ticked all the boxes - super quick to make and bake, reasonably cheap to make (especially if you use frozen fruit) and fairly healthy to boot. Well, they only contain 50g of butter for the entire tray, and they've got fresh fruit and oats too so although they aren't as healthy as say, a piece of fruit, you could certainly do worse!

I adapted the recipe slightly, and as I said, I used frozen fruit. I allowed it to thaw first, before mushing it up as stated in the recipe. You can find the original recipe here.

Raspberry oat traybake
Ingredients
200g rolled oats
50g medium oatmeal
150g raspberries, thawed if frozen, then mashed to break them up
1/2tsp vanilla extract
50g butter
75g runny honey

Method
- Grease and line an 8" square tin (20x20cm). Preheat the oven to gas 7/220C.
- Melt the butter and honey over a gentle heat.
- Mix in the oats, oatmeal and vanilla if using.
- Spread about half of the mixture into the tin and press down.
- Spread over the raspberries and then sprinkle/spread over the remaining oat mixture.
- Bake for 10-12 minutes until golden and crispy.

I used a mild honey, so it wasn't too obvious in flavour. I wouldn't bother adding the vanilla again, it got lost in the other flavours, although I had thought it would go well with raspberries. I think I baked mine at gas 6 rather than gas 7, but can't honestly remember, which is a pity because they were indeed browned at 12 minutes, as suggested by the recipe. Perhaps I did use gas 7 then...

I think next time I'll use more fruit because 150g only gave a very thin covering. I also used slightly more than half of the mixture to cover the base, and then sprinkled everything that was left over the top.

As you can imagine, without very much fat to hold them together they were very crumbly. Not so that you couldn't pick up a piece, but you had to be careful. I really liked them and can see them becoming quite a regular quick bake for when I can't think what else to make - they made a perfect small midmorning snack. I think they'd also be great with blackberries (though you'd have to make sure to squash them up well, and might need 200g to get a layer), or perhaps even very finely chopped stone fruit like apricots or nectarines. All sorts of possibilities!

Jammy oaty slice

As most of the country is covered in snow, even here in the north west of the UK where we rarely get snow, let alone enough for it to stay for almost a week I thought it would be a good time to post these yummy jammy oaty treats. They're perfect for this kind of weather because they use entirely storecupboard ingredients yet taste delicious and warming. Perfect for if you're stuck at home and can't get to the shops, or if you've just had a long walk in the cold and want a tasty treat to eat with your warming mug of hot chocolate.

I was especially pleased to be able to finish off not one, not two, but three jars of jam lurking in the depths of my fridge in these bars. My mixture was strawberry, raspberry and blackcurrant.

I followed the recipe exactly as given here, one of Xanthe Clay's recipes but left mine in a little longer than specified because I wanted a crispier top. The bars aren't as sweet as flapjack, nor as chewy - they're a little more crumbly due to the addition of flour but still with that warming, delicious oaty flavour. the jam in the middle gives a nice hit of sweetness - just choose your favourite jam or do as I did and use up leftovers.

Keep warm in this weather and enjoy some tasty treats. I'm sending these over to Julia over at A Slice of Cherry Pie, who has asked for snow day treats. I think these would be perfect!

My snow picture was taken last year as I ventured across the Pennines to visit family. I had to stop at the summit as the snow ploughs did their work and made Woodhead Pass safe for cars to pass again. I'm not sure I'll ever get a chance to take a photo like this again - it's not a place cars usually stop!

Chocolate apricot oat crunchies

It's an unsulphured dried apricot, just in case you were wondering....

Mostly my baking is planned. Not very well planned, I'm the first to admit, but there is usually a little forethought to what I'm making. Sometimes, though, it's just spontaneous. I was about to take a cake out of the oven, and had just enough time before needing to cook my dinner to fit in another simple, quick to bake recipe. And that's where these little biscuits come in. They aren't posh or particularly photogenic, but they are easy and quick to make, and taste good, which is what it's all about after all. (You could even pretend they're healthy, what with the oats and all, but no, no they're not...)


One of the nicest things about this recipe is the way it lends itself to variations so well. The recipe is Delia's originally, but once you've added what you fancy, it becomes your own. Delia suggests chocolate almond, apricot pecan, cherry flaked almond, and raisin hazelnut but I wanted dried apricots and dark chocolate (and for once, my colleagues had dark rather than milk chocolate, because these biscuits were all about pleasing myself, not someone else!). The recipe was published in Delia Smith's How to Cook, Book 1 (a lady after my own heart; biscuits and cakes get a chapter in the first book of the series, meat and fish etc. have to wait until later!!!)


As I followed the recipe faithfully (not often I can say that!) I will just give a link to the online version on Delia's website. I used 50g chopped dark chocolate, and 50g chopped unsulphured apricots, omitted the mixed spice and didn't bother with the topping. I would advise letting the mixture cool a little before addding the chocolate because mine mostly melted, and it would have been nice to have chunks of chocolate in the biscuit.


I loved them, colleagues loved them, what more is there to say?

Peanut and cranberry oat bars

I'm sort of at a loss as to how to describe these. I want to call them flapjack because they are a baked bar containing oats and no flour, but to me, flapjack is full of syrup and butter and these bars contain neither, so I'll stick to the name in the title, which is descriptive if a little clumsy. The recipe comes from the Sainsbury's Magazine, which I buy each month and think is great value (£1.40 compared to around £3.40 for most of the other monthly food magazines you can get - Olive, BBC Good Food etc). However, I enjoy buying and reading the magazine, but rarely get round to making anything from it (although this applies to most of the magazines I buy - am I the only one who is guilty of this? I suspect not.....) and so for me to make these within a few months of seeing the recipe, even within the same season, is something of a surprise! In fact, I have made them twice, with slight differences.

The feature they come from is all about 'The fats that help your health' and is explaining about mono-unsaturated fatty acids being beneficial for health so the recipes are low in saturated fats and high in mono-unsaturates - plenty of nuts, seeds and avocados. Fear not, this recipe does not contain avocado! It does contain nuts though, and the original version also contained seeds, but I left these out as I'm not really wild about them. Peanuts are one of the few nuts I am not allergic to (I have been eating them all my life, and am very lucky, because peanut allergy can be extremely severe and peanuts/peanut oil are used in a lot of commercial goods) and are not actually a true nut, growing below the ground as explained in the article linked above.

I actually decided to make this recipe (on both occasions) to help with an overabundance of low fat yogurt in my fridge as the recipe calls for low fat yogurt to provide the moistness. (If the picture above looks dry, this is my poor cutting skills - it is really, really moist!) As with flapjack, the recipe is a doddle to put together and can be done at the last moment. Great for lunchboxes (unless your child's school has banned peanuts!) or as a healthy breaktime snack for the grown ups too.

Peanut and cranberry oat bars

Ingredients

75g crunchy peanut butter

100g caster sugar

6tbsp agave nectar or honey (I used honey the first time, and golden syrup the next....)

225g virtually fat free yogurt

100g dried cranberries (I didn't have enough the first time so used half and half cranberries and raisins)

275g porridge oats (the recipe specifies 225g but I found this made a very wet mixture)

Method

- Grease and line an 8"/20cm square cake tin with baking parchment

- Preheat the oven to 190C/Gas 5.

- In a pan, gently heat the peanut butter, sugar and honey until melted. Then stir in the yogurt and dried fruit and then the oats.

- Tip into the prepared tin and smooth the mixture into the corners with the back of a spoon.

- Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown. Mine took longer to become the colour you see in the pictures, probably nearer 45 minutes, but because the mixture is so moist there doesn't seem to be any detrimental effect.

- Using a small sharp knife mark into rectangles (8-10) and then leave to cool completely in the tin.

- When cold turn out and cut into bars.

Recipe note: The original recipe says: 'The bars will keep for several days in an airtight container. They freeze well too."

In its second incarnation this recipe contains all dried cranberries instead of mixed with raisins, golden syrup instead of honey, and butter instead of peanut butter. Just as moist as the version above, but almost certainly significantly less healthy. Guess which version I preferred. Sigh. Oh well, it's still lower in fat than traditional flapjack, and is a good way of getting oats into your diet. (Yes, I grant you that porridge is still a better way, but these are more portable!)

Colleagues enjoyed both versions and the moistness of the bar was a welcome contrast to the chewy dried fruit and oats. I would make these again, but probably only to use up excess yogurt if I have it hanging around in the fridge.

Treacle and ginger flapjack

I've been on a bit of a spice kick lately - it started with this parkin, and continued with this lovely cinnamon apple cake and a couple of other as yet unblogged about items. I was still craving warming spices and ginger in particular and my sweet tooth wanted not just simple sweetness, but depth and richness too. So treacle and ginger flapjack fitted my desires perfectly. This was so easy to throw together, but then flapjack always is! Melt the ingredients together, add oats, put into lined tin and bake.

I was really pleased with the way these came out - buttery and chewy with a hint of treacle. Biting into a nugget of crystallised stem ginger was delicious, I really, really love crystallised stem ginger!!! Colleagues were pleased too, at least there was very little left by the end of the day, which is always a good sign!

The recipe I used is the same as last time, except that I used half and half black treacle and golden syrup and used 100g chopped crystallised stem ginger instead of chocolate.

Ingredients
175g butter
120g light brown soft sugar
100g golden syrup
100g black treacle
350g rolled oats
100g chopped crystallised stem ginger (although you could add more if you want to!)

Method
- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Grease and line an 8" x 12" (20 x 30 cm) baking tin. Please use parchment paper, greaseproof paper may well stick to your delicious flapjacks rendering them sadly inedible (I speak from experience - not mine, but J's!!!).
- Melt the butter, sugar, treacle and syrup over a low heat.
- When melted add the oats and mix well until everything is coated.
- Add the chopped ginger and mix briefly to distribute the ginger.
- Spoon into the prepared tin and roughly level out. Place in the preheated oven and cook for 30 minutes until deliciously light golden brown.
- Mark into pieces while still warm (this is much easier than waiting until they are completely cold - believe me!) and allow to cool completely in the tin.
- Store in an airtight container. They should keep for a few days. Unless you just can't resist them, which may well be the case!

Plum Oat Squares

Well, still here and still blogging. I'm being held up not by a lack of things to blog about, but by my disorganisation - I have lots of things to blog and insufficient pictures of them. So you'll have to use your imagination for this one I'm afraid. I wanted to take a picture of the inside after cooking, but forgot and now they're all gone. I'd make them again, but the list of recipes on my 'to bake' list is growing rapidly and I don't want to rebake these just yet! I'll try and be more organised next time!

The nights are drawing in rapidly and I went to work and came home in the dark for the first time a couple of days ago. Autumn is definitely here and with it come the apples, plums, pears, parsnips, leeks, pumpkins, squash and all the bounty of harvest time. I wanted to make the most of some lovely plums I had picked up at the greengrocer, I think they may have been Marjorie Seedlings, not the hard unyielding type imported from South Africa all year round, but luscious, juicy English plums in their proper season.

Plum and oat seem like natural partners to me, think of warming plum crumble with an oaty topping and you'll see what I mean (plums and almonds also spring to mind, but not for me I'm afraid!) so this recipe from Delia Smith really appealed. I've made it before (pre-blogging, many, many years ago) with apples, so I knew that it'd be really good (and let's face it, most of Delias recipes are really good, the most recent 'Cheat' series excepted....). I'm not a huge cinnamon fan, but if you are, go ahead and add it in!

Plum oat squares

450g fresh plums (although I only had about 350g)

5oz/150g porridge oats

10oz/275g plain flour (Delia specifies wholemeal, but I didn't have it)

1 tsp salt (which I omitted as I used salted butter)

8oz/225g butter

4oz/110g light muscovado sugar

Method

- Preheat the oven to 200C/Gas 6/400F. Grease and line an 8inch/20cm square tin with parchment paper (as seen below).

- Prepare your plums - wash, cut in half, remove the stone and slice fairly finely. Set aside.

- Melt the butter with the sugar gently until the butter has melted. Stir in the oats and flour until well mixed.

- Take 1/3 of this mixture (Delia says 1/2, but if I take 1/2 at this stage, I find I haven't got enough mixture to cover the fruit later on) and spread it over the base of your tin. It won't be a very thick layer, so just keep moving it about until the base is covered.

- Spread the plums evenly over the oaty base.

- Cover the plums with the remaining oaty mixture. I dollop it on in small amounts, dotted around because if you dump it all in the middle, it's really difficult to spread it out. This is where it's handy to have 2/3 of the mixture left to ensure that all the fruit is covered.

- Place in the preheated oven and bake for 25-30 minutes, or a little longer if you want it really crispy. It's very forgiving - I think I left mine in for 45 minutes and it isn't in the slightest bit burnt.

- Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes or so before cutting. Allow to cool completely in the tin.

I really love this recipe - the oaty cakey bit is chewier than a flapjack and really moist and delicious, with a lovely contrast from the soft, juicy plums in the middle. Yum, yum, yum! Disappeared pretty quickly at work too, hence being unable to get a photo of the innards of the slice - trust me, it's great! A lovely autumnal way of using plums, I think I'll try apples next time. Not sure whether cookers or eaters would be better though - what do you think???

Lemon and raisin flapjacks

I suppose this is really more of a note to myself than anything particularly original. When I made these chocolate flapjacks, I was really pleased with their texture - slightly thicker and more 'oaty' than my usual ones, and given that they went down so well at work, I was inspired to try different variations. If I don't post about this one soon, I'll forget what I added to them, which would be a real pity because they were really good!

So no new recipe I'm afraid, I used the same recipe as here, but omitted the chocolate, replacing it with 100g raisins and the finely grated zest of one lemon. I know that J feels flapjacks should be 'pure' and not have other things added to them, but I'm going to disagree with her! These were yummy and the lemony flavour was great. It cut the richness a little, and the raisins were good - not too prominent, but added a little interest to the flapjack. I was worried that they'd burn during the cooking, but they didn't. A few on the top caught a little, but not in an acrid burnt way, just in a chewy, tasty way. And if you really don't like those ones, you could easily pick them off! I think that next time, I might add the zest of another lemon, because I really liked the flavour it gave, but it was quite subtle this time.

These went down just as well at work as the last batch. I think I'm on to a winner. Quick and easy to make, and not too expensive either!

Milk chocolate 'Everyone knows oats are good for you' Flapjacks

Mmmm, delicious oaty goodness. Oats really are very good for you. Full of soluble fibre and with a low GI, they'll keep you full for longer. Flapjack on the other hand, is sadly not very good for you. Flapjack is chock full of sugar and butter and in this case, delicious Green and Blacks chocolate. But flapjack really is delicious and so you should forget that it isn't as good for you as you want to believe and just enjoy it!

What prompted that little ramble there? Well, when I took these into work, they disappeared rather quickly. Far more quickly than I had expected. I took them in at the same time as an apple cake (recipe to follow, just to keep you in suspense!) and they were definitely more popular. Now this could be for a couple of different reasons; a) the cake looked nasty (which it didn't, I promise) or b) people believe flapjack is good for them because it's full of oats. Hmmm.

These were a request from a colleague who 'doesn't like cake'. I don't know where these people hide, but they obviously do exist! Anyway, she liked these flapjacks and was most put out when other people ate them too!

Anyway, what you really want is the recipe for these flapjacks because they were rightly popular - chewy and sticky with little nuggets of chocolately goodness (!) spread throughout. They are simplicity itself to make and in just 40 minutes you too could be eating warm flapjack with melting chocolate....Enjoy them for what they are (just don't kid yourself that they're health food!).

Milk chocolate flapjacks

Ingredients

175g butter

120g light brown soft sugar

200g golden syrup

350g rolled oats

100g milk chocolate (or dark if that's your thing!) chopped into little chunks

Method

- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Grease and line an 8" x 12" (20 x 30 cm) baking tin. Please use parchment paper, greaseproof paper may well stick to your delicious flapjacks rendering them sadly inedible (I speak from experience - not mine, but J's!!!).

- Melt the butter, sugar and syrup over a low heat.

- When melted add the oats and mix well until everything is coated.

- Add the chocolate and mix briefly and quickly to prevent the chocolate melting entirely.

- Spoon into the prepared tin and roughly level out. Place in the preheated oven and cook for 30 minutes until deliciously light golden brown.

- Mark into pieces while still warm (this is much easier than waiting until they are completely cold - believe me!) and allow to cool completely in the tin.

- Store in an airtight container. They should keep for a few days. Unless you just can't resist them, which may well be the case!

Banana flapjacks with white chocolate

The perpetual problem of being a generally disorganised person and living on my own is that I often have bananas excess to requirements. Don't get me wrong, I like bananas, I eat them every day but I don't like them squashily ripe. Ugh. A combination of having bought a couple too many bananas and then feeling under the weather and going off eating bananas (anything really!) meant that ideas were needed to prevent the decomposition any further. Luckily, squishy bananas are great for baking.

This recipe is a slightly adapted Sue Lawrence recipe, taken from her Book of Baking, in the healthy alternatives chapter. I think this is probably because oats are considered to be healthy, but lets be honest, in normal flapjack they're glued together with copious amounts of (admittedly delicious, but undeniably calorific) butter, sugar and syrup. The beauty of this recipe is that the bananas add some sweetness, and bind the mixture too, meaning that much less butter and sugar are needed here. So these genuinely are quite healthy! Except that it's nearly Christmas and at Christmas it becomes obligatory to eat more than we should, and chocolate is always a good way to go, so a dousing of white chocolate was in order. Less healthy, but more delicious! I toyed with the idea of adding dried cranberries too, but decided against it in the end. I suppose it would have been more festive, but never mind.

Banana flapjacks with white chocolate
Ingredients
125g/4 1/2oz butter
85g/ 3oz slight muscovado sugar
2 tbsp golden syrup
350g/12oz porridge oats
2 very ripe bananas, mashed (medium ish size!)

Method

- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4 and lightly butter a 23x33cm/9x13in swiss roll tin.

- Melt the butter, sugar and syrup in a pan over a low heat (or in a microwave if you possess one I don't!). Tip in the oats (or if you've used a small pan, tip the butter mixture into a bowl containing the oats) and start to stir. Add the mashed banana and keep mixing until no dry bits or clumps of banana remain.

- Tip into prepared tin and level as best you can (with the back of a spoon is good).

- Bake for 20-25 minutes (but mine took 30) until lightly golden brown around the edges and it feels fairly firm all over.

- Remove from oven and cut into bars while hot. Allow to cool completely before taking out of tin.

- Melt white chocolate in small bowl over a pan of hot water (or in the microwave if you prefer) and carefully dip the flapjacks into the chocolate. Place on a piece of parchment/silicon paper until set (a few hours or overnight).

- Enjoy

NB This is a very soft flapjack, unlike traditional versions. It will not break your teeth but it isn't as robust as normal flapjack, and is more likely to crumble. Be careful handling it!

I took these into church, nominally for the children, but the adults ended up eating them anyway. They were well received and people liked the fact that you didn't get shards of lethal oat coated with sugar etc trying to pierce your mouth!!!