In this house we've always been looking for the hold grail of flapjacks. Something that's got a bit of crunch to it, but is also deliciously chewy and moist. To date we've failed to find it, but I'm not deterred and whenever I see a new flapjack recipe I'm prepared to try it in the hope that this might be the one.
Hannah over at Muddling Along Mummy recently posted her dairy free flapjack recipe and I thought I ought to try it too. I did make one (slight) tweak to the recipe though. Not being a dairy free household we don't have any dairy free spread in, so instead I just substituted it with margarine. Now I have to say that I'm not sure if I should have just done a one for one substitution here or not, but well that's what I did!
The recipe is very very simple, just four ingredients:
- 8oz dairy free spread
- 8oz soft brown sugar
- 5 tbsp golden syrup
- 12oz oats
You melt together the spread, sugar and the golden syrup and then once they are all combined, mix in the oats. It's an ideal recipe to do with children thanks to its simplicity.
Once all the ingredients are mixed together then press it into a tin and bake for about 20 minutes at 200 degrees until golden brown. Now this is where things seemed to go a little bit wrong… After 20 minutes our flapjack just looked like an oaty soup still in the tin. Five minutes later it still resembled soup, but it had gone a lovely golden brown colour. We decided to take it out of the oven at this stage in the hope that it would cool down and solidify a bit.
It did firm up a bit, but admittedly not quite as much as we would have expected it to. This flapjack was delicius though – so incredibly chewy that if you had a big piece then it actually made my jaw ache by the end – and also managed to taste so good that you knew that it couldn't possibly be doing you any good!
Sadly it wasn't quite the holy grail of flapjacks though – too chewy for that – but it was close. What I need to do now though is work out just how much margarine I should have used substituted and then it might work next time. Thanks for sharing Hannah!
I wonder if normal margarine needs less syrup? It’s more syrup than I’ve used before but the recipe went down so well with all family members that I’ll definitely be doing it again!
Thanks for the suggestion – Ill try less syrup next time.