Hello cyberspace. Welcome to my blog. I've attempted a blog before, but I was not writing about things that I really love, and so I have decided to write about baking, and any other creativity that I happen to get up to.
I will endeavour to give you some background for this first post. Tomorrow I am heading off to Greece with an early morning start of 5:30am. At this point in the morning, I don't know about you, I am certainly not hungry enough for the usual yoghurt and granola. So I decided to bake a sort of breakfast bar. As I would be catering for my parents as well as my younger sisters I had to come up with an idea that was both sweet and healthy at the same time. Queue the Healthy(ish) Flapjack Breakfast Bar.
It turned out pretty delicious, and both my parents and my sisters loved their sample bites. It was quite light and very crumbly (due to the severe lack of Golden Syrup). Hope you like.
Ingredients
100g of spread/ butter.
(I used Stork, as it said it was good for cooking, but I doubt it was at all 'nutritious')
(Some alternatives could be Flora Pro-Active, Anchor Lighter Spreadable, I Can't Believe Its Not Butter.)
4 generous tablespoons of Agave Nectar.
(This is the sweet yet not so sugary alternative to golden syrup or honey.)
250g of oats
1 quarter of a cup of raisins/ currents
1 quarter of a cup of pumpkin seeds
(I only used pumpkin seeds as they are a personal favourite and we had plenty of them in the house, but any other seeds would work. )
Honey - to drizzle on top at the end to help it all stick together.
Feel free to get creative with the seeds and fruit.
Ideas could be: Dates, Apples, ANY dried fruit, goji berries would be delicious. Even crispy, dried banana all crushed up would give it extra texture.
Step 1: Cut out a square piece of baking paper and line a 18inch square baking tray. It should be quite thick so that the flapjacks can be a chunky as possible. They are harder to line with paper, however, so I cut the lines into each corner so that it folded in on itself, as shown.
Preheat the oven to 180 degreesC, or 170degrees in a fan oven.
Step 2: Weigh out the butter/ spread. I use an electric scales but any will do. Its best to weigh it out in the pan that you will use for the whole process, as butter tends to stick to things.
Step 3: Pour the 4 'Generous' tablespoons of Agave Nectar, into the pan with the butter.
Step 5: Stir together on a low heat, until they are both fully mixed together.
Step 6: Pour the oats in to the butter and agave nectar pan.
Step 7: Mix it all together.
Step 8: okay I know I said this was a healthy, golden syrup free recipe. But I found just 1 teaspoon helped the mixture to clump together a bit more. You can definitely leave it out and it will taste just as delicious.
Step 9: Measure out the pumpkin seeds and add them to the mixture.
Step 10: Measure out the currents and add them to mixture. Mix it all together again.
Step 11: Pour into your baking tray.
Step 12: Put in the preheated oven. Set a timer for 15 minutes, and check them after that. If they are not golden/ brown on top then they need a little longer. Keep going until satisfied. Max 25 minutes.
Step 12: Once finished baking, remove from the oven and leave to set in the pan for 5 minutes, while it cools. At this point mine didn't seem to be a sticky as I would have hoped, so I drizzled some honey over the top, I'm not sure if it helped but it improved the taste. To allow it to cool further carefully remove the baking paper from the pan with the flapjack still on it. Leave it for as long as you feel the need to. Slice into squares and serve warm, or let them cool in sealed container.
Hope you like them.
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