Sweet, comforting and endlessly flexible, flapjack is the perfect lockdown bake. Whether you’re a vegan, a hipster or a millionaire, we’ve got you covered
Perhaps I am over-generalising, but I feel that the flapjack rarely migrates from the home economics class into everyday adult life. Yet at this moment, it hits all the notes: it is wholesome, very simple, you can bake it with children and you can throw any old nonsense in to no obvious ill effect. Plus, it needs no flour, which is great if you can’t get hold of any, and oats are incredibly good value. There is no kitchen alchemy involving things that have a habit of going wrong – no raising agent, no uncertainty from adding an egg.
I tried every which way, with the “help” of an outrageously careless 10-year-old, to get one wrong, just for the suspense. There were rumours that tin size was important, that the wrong dimensions messed with the texture. It is true that a thinner flapjack will have a more biscuity, less squidgy mouthfeel, but biscuity is still fine, otherwise why would people eat biscuits? It is also true that the finer the oats, the more they hold together in the finished product, but even jumbo oats didn’t fall apart as I had been led to believe. But if this really worries you, you can make them finer by whizzing them first in a food processor, anyway.
Continue reading...