Gran’s flapjack

As I’ve said before, my baking adventures aren’t all that successful. My sister H is totally different and is fantastic at baking. She came to stay with Mr C and me over the bank holiday weekend so I decided to use the opportunity to get in a quick lesson.

Over the years I have tried various flapjack recipes, but have never managed to get anything close to that made by my Gran. I’ve always ended up with something either very crumbly, or so hard that you nearly break your teeth on it!

So, H and I decided to start my lesson by phoning my Mum for a copy of Gran’s recipe:

4oz brown sugar
4oz margarine
1 tbsp golden syrup
1 tbsp water
5 oz oats
3oz self raising flour

So, where to start. Melting the sugar, margarine, golden syrup and water together in a pan. This bit I think I managed OK.

The next stage is adding the oats and flour to the melted mixture.

Again, not too difficult – even for me.

This is followed by the bit where I always seem to go wrong – the oven!

The instructions in this recipe call for 160 degrees for a maximum of 15 minutes. Now, my over is FIERCE – very fierce. Hence we actually put it in at just under 150 degrees and H’s recommendation was to remove it from the oven after about 12 minutes. I have to say that I would have normally waited for it to look a bit browner, but she was in charge this time!

So, the key question – how did it taste? Well… to be totally honest it actually wasn’t as good as expected. There was a bit too much of a floury taste for my liking, but H swore blind that her efforts using this recipe don’t usually turn out like this. So convinced she was that she repeated the recipe once she got back home. Her follow up report – that I should buy a bigger tablespoon and include more golden syrup. Her results were less floury and more sticky.

I’ll experiment again when the contents of my cake tin are running low and let you know how I get on!