Fruity Coconut Flapjack

I enjoy the flavour of toasted oats in baking. I brought a bag of medium oatmeal back from my recent trip to Scotland, and used it to make the flapjacks shown in my photo above.

They are based on a recipe by Paul Hollywood, of Great British Bake-Off fame, and combine the oatmeal, which is quite finely ground, with rolled oats. The theory is that the two different thicknesses of oat adds chewiness. It also helps the flapjack mixture meld together, rather than descending into a collection of crumbly clusters, as flapjacks sometimes have a tendency to do.

Most importantly, they taste great, the golden brown oats mixing in with coconut, ground almonds, raisins and cranberries.

Servings

Makes 16 square flapjacks.

Timings

15 mins to prepare, 25 mins to bake at 180C.

You Will Need

• 150g medium oatmeal
• 150g rolled oats
• 50g desiccated coconut
• 50g ground almonds
• 50g dried raisins and cranberries
• 200g baking spread
• 75g caster sugar
• 160g golden syrup

Method

1. Grease and line a baking tin – the one I used is 20 cm square. Turn on the oven to 180C.
2. In a bowl, mix together both varieties of oats with the almonds, coconut and dried fruit.
3. Put the spread, sugar and syrup in a saucepan and warm on the hob until it has dissolved into a sweet, sticky sludge. Pour into the bowl of oats and mix well, till there are no dry ingredients showing.
4. Scrape into the prepared tin and level the surface. Bake in the oven for 25 mins.
5. Remove from the oven – the top should be golden and there should be signs of toasting at the edges. Leave to cool in the tin.
6. While it is cooling, cut with a sharp knife into 16 squares, while still in the tin. When completely cool, you can then lift out each square to serve.

Customise It!

Add other dried fruit, like chopped apricots, in place of some of the raisins and cranberries, or possibly also some ground toasted nuts or seeds. Don’t add more than the overall quantity of 50g however, otherwise the mixture will be more prone to crumble apart.

I said I’d feature a track by The Chats, the Australian punk trio I saw supporting Queens of the Stone Age last week. They are a lot of fun and don’t take themselves that seriously – a cartoon-like Aussie punk version of The Monkees. Check out some of their videos on You Tube. Here they are with Smoko.