Ten years ago, before her place in the pantheon of domestic deities was assured, Nigella Lawson got a bit of abuse for a recipe included in How To Be A Domestic Goddess. Her flapjacks were brittle, and difficult to remove from the tin, apparently. I’ve followed her recipe twice, and I dare say that they are on the crumbly side, but I’m no threat to Nigella. She can rest secure in her elevated position in my eyes and the eyes of the nation now.
My mother’s flapjack recipe is divine. It makes no pretensions to wholesomeness. A mixture of cornflakes, oats, flour, golden syrup and butter combine to make a tooth-achingly sweet and sticky confection. It’s not an elegant creation, and these must be the sweetest flapjacks I’ve ever tasted, but I would defy you to eat just one piece.
Flapjacks could unite the nation. For the healthy, they can be filled with nuts, seeds, and dried fruit galore. For those of us who like a sugar hit that doesn’t feel empty, they are incredibly satisfying.
Last month Felicity Cloake devoted a column of her wonderful Guardian series How to Cook the Perfect… to flapjacks. She tests many recipes and presents the best. I have tried many flapjack recipes over the years, as my waistline would happily attest, and here’s the one I present to you.
Flapjacks should properly be plain, but if you’re going to add something to them, please stop before you reach the packet of raisins. Move your hand slightly to the left and pick up a bag of dried cherries instead. Cherries add the perfect sour note to provide a tangy relief to the unalloyed sweetness of a flapjack.
Makes: approx 20 flapjacks, depending on how greedy you are!
Ingredients:
- 6oz butter
- 6oz demerara sugar
- 3tbsp golden syrup
- 60z dried cherries
- 12oz rolled (porridge oats)
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 180C
- Melt the butter, sugar, and syrup in a large saucepan, over a gentle heat, until the sugar has dissolved. (An aside: I have to confess, my measuring of golden syrup is nowadays very approximate. It’s not that easy to do a clever trick with boiling water and a spoon when your toddler wants to join in too).
- Remove from the heat and add the oats and dried cherries. Stir in.
- Put the mixture into a 23cm square tin. I like to line my tin. Bake for 25 minutes, until the top has turned golden.
- Allow to cool for 20 minutes in the tin before cutting into bars or squares, and allow to cool completely on a wire rack.
