I love flapjacks. Slightly chewy, not too soft, not too crunchy, a blissful mixture of both. And, I can kid myself they are healthy. Well, relatively so. I mean oats, nuts, seeds….!
On the face of it, a more easy recipe would be hard to find. Melt the butter and syrup, add the oats and seeds / nuts / fruit and slap it in the oven. Yet somehow, this is a recipe I cannot master. Mine barely hold together. I follow the recipe exactly (yes, really I do!) I squash the mixture down hard in the baking tin, I cut the slices whilst still in the tin but leave it to cool completely before turning out. And still they crumble. I have googled this many a time, I am using the correct oats, the correct balance of other ingredients. I just don’t know what I should do to make them slightly less crumbly.
But, as I said, I do love flapjacks and so I decided to give them another go. I figured if it failed completely I would use them as a crumble topping for a fruit pudding. Think laterally, and all that!
I added pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and pecan nuts to the mixture. The result? A partial success. Partial in that some of the mixture stuck together, but a lot of it crumbled. The squares that seem to hold together fall apart too easily in the hand though. I will not be defeated! One day I will find a recipe that I can bake with success!
Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, I wish you a peaceful weekend 🙂