Naughty flapjack

Rather like our cookies, these rely on a little coconut oil indulgence.  These are surprisingly healthy flapjacks if you’re trying to avoid dairy and refined sugars but if you find any of the ingredients hard to come by and are a little less health conscious, you can easily replace all of the ingredients like for like with a simpler alternative (see Tips below).

Ingredients

• 280g coconut oil
• 70g rice malt syrup
• 210g coconut palm sugar
• 470g oats

Method

Preheat the oven to 160c (fan)

Melt the oil and syrup together in a small saucepan.

While you’re doing this, combine the sugar and oats in a mixing bowl.

Once the oil/syrup have melted, add them to the mixing bowl and combine well.

Then push into a lined 12 x 9-inch (about 30 x 23cm) tray and squish down with a spatula.

Put in the oven for 20-25 minutes.

After removing from the oven, allow to cool completely before cutting into bars.

Tips

Many flapjack recipes suggest using a medium/large saucepan and once the oil or butter have melted to add the dry ingredients to the saucepan.  Although it’s a personal preference, I like to transfer this to a mixing bowl with the dry ingredients which I can then embrace tightly as I mix all the ingredients – which is a little more tricky with a hot saucepan!

Especially if using coconut sugar and rice syrup, don’t be tempted to add the sugar to the hot oil/syrup before the oats.  If you do this you can end up with a chewy, stringy consistency before you add the oats and it’s hard to mix.

You can substitute unsalted butter for coconut oil, caster sugar for coconut palm sugar and golden syrup for rice malt syrup although you might need to experiment a little as they do affect the consistency and texture slightly – the key is to give everything time to completely cool and not be tempted to try them before, otherwise you can end up with a crumbly mess.

Trivia

“Flapjack” is the traditional name for this type of recipe in the United Kingdom and in Ireland, but in countries such as Australia and New Zealand they are called “muesli bar” or “cereal bar”, while in North America and South Africa they are “oat bars” (because in those countries “flapjack” describes a kind of pancake).