A little self portrait…

nostalgia-by-proxy — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 22:54:45 +0000

Recipe: Imperfect Flapjacks

nostalgia-by-proxy — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 22:41:07 +0000

I’ve recently been getting into baking. Partly because it’s fun to make things, but mostly because I spend an unreasonable amount of money on expensive (yet ultimately, disappointing) cakes - most commonly, flapjack. So, the obvious place to start was with homemade flapjack. A pretty simple set of ingredients, reasonably cheap, and the results would directly target my existing 40-a-day flapjack addiction. Everybody wins.

The original recipe came from this Guardian article by Felicity Cloake. She gives a brief overview of how different existing recipes suggest using the various ingredients, before moving onto the proposed recipe for “Perfect flapjacks”. As a “professional” “scientist”, I was naturally drawn to this approach. A literature review of the current state-of-the-art, followed by a novel method, given in sufficient detail to (hopefully) recreate the results.

So, standing on the shoulders of giants, I’m pushing the flapjack state-of-the-art forward with my own version of the recipe:

Imperfect Flapjacks

Makes 9 (as opposed to Cloake’s rather ambitious 16)

250g unsalted butter, 75g salted butter - this change was made 1) because in the UK, butter is normally sold in 250g packs, 2) I only had one pack of unsalted butter in the fridge, and 3) I wasn’t going to wrap 25g of salted butter back up and put it in the fridge. Conveniently, it means you don’t need to add a pinch of salt later on.

75g dark muscovado sugar - a stand-in for demerara sugar, muscovado is slightly stickier, resulting (empirically, at least) in a more moist treacle-tinged flapjack.

An amount of golden syrup - I honestly have no idea how (or even, if) anyone can measure golden syrup with any degree of accuracy. The recipe recommends 120g, or 6 tablespoons. Measuring syrup with a spoon is inaccurate at best, as the spoon never really becomes empty, making subsequent tablespoons smaller than expected. Alternatively, if you weigh 120g of syrup in a set of scales, a mystery fraction of that amount will actually make it into the recipe, with the rest spread evenly between the scales, and the spoon you used to scrape it out. In my version, I ended up pouring it directly over a tablespoon into the butter, until what looked like 6 spoonfuls had fallen in. On reflection, the tin was left about half empty, suggesting something like 230g of syrup made it into the flapjack.

250g Scott’s Old Fashioned porage oats - neither specifically “jumbo”, nor “whole”, but “thick”. It was the most suitable thing I could find when I ordered the online shop.

200g quick-cook oats - the only thing I managed to get right from the original recipe. Think of it as a “control” ingredient.

2tsp ground cinnamon - an attempt at “mixing things up” and “making the recipe my own”. Completely undetectable.

1. Preheat the oven to 150C/300F/Gas Mark 2, and get a silicone brownie “tin” out of the cupboard. Don’t grease it, and don’t line it with anything. With this much butter in the recipe itself, it really isn’t necessary.

2. Melt the butter, sugar and syrup together. The original recipe just says to do it in a pan, but I prefer a Bain-marie. The outcome should be identical, but it means I can forget about it for a while without anything burning and sticking to the bottom. While forgetting about this, weigh out the oats and tip them into a giant mixing bowl, cursing Scott’s ridiculous side-of-box opening, and the flapjack’s-worth of oats that are now all over your worktop and floor.

3. Remember the melted buttery-sugary-syrupy goo, pour it into the oats, and stir it. Add the cinnamon, or don’t - it literally doesn’t matter. Tip the whole lot into the silicone tray, pat it down a bit with a spatula, and put it in the oven for 25 minutes. While it’s in, clean everything else up. Pro tip, there.

4. Put the flapjack (still in the tray) straight in the fridge, ignoring the fact the you’re not really meant to put things in the fridge when they’re still hot. It’ll be fine. Trust me.

5. After an hour or so, take it out of the fridge, and - still in the tray - slice it into nine squares. It still won’t be set properly, so put the tray back in the fridge, ideally overnight. If you really need to, scoop one of the squares out now, and eat it as a big crumbly disappointing mess. Don’t worry - its absence will provide ample access to remove the other pieces cleanly with a spatula.

6. Do that.

And that’s it. The combination of too much syrup, the wrong sort of sugar, and a too-deep baking tin results in an unreasonably gooey, yet completely delicious flapjack, with most of the syrup settled at the bottom. While cutting the whole thing into nine gives each piece a bit more structural integrity, it also means you have to eat almost twice as much in one sitting. If you think you can cut it into sixteen without smashing the whole thing to bits, give it a go.

Otherwise, skip breakfast, drink your morning coffee without sugar, and set yourself up for the day with a square.

omniphobia

A little self portrait…

Recipe: Imperfect Flapjacks