Flapjacks
England has a thing called “Flapjacks”. They’re not like an American flapjack, which is just another word for “pancake”. They’re more like granola bars and make good pocket food. They’re calorie dense, and made with whatever you put in it. As I’m doing a century tomorrow, I thought I’d make some. And since this seems to be one of those things that has as many recipes as there are people, I didn’t think much could go wrong.
I followed the AllRecipes.com recipe with a few exceptions.
I used butter rather than margarine (it’s what I had) and I used honey rather than golden syrup (which is not readily available) or corn syrup. (Golden syrup seems to be just a highly concentrated simple syrup.) I’ve heard you can use maple syrup, molasses, or agave as well, each giving a different flavor. I have plenty of agave but decided to use honey because it has more flavor. You’d probably also want to use different fruits with different syrups.
They came out really well. A few of the comments on AllRecipes.com mentioned they can get crumbly and as I’ll be carrying these in my pocket (in a sandwich bag) I don’t want them to fall apart too much. So I held back about ½ cup of the oats hoping it will hold together better. We’ll see if it worked. They’re a bit sticky but not overly so.
It’s funny. I used golden raisins, but after baking, they are black.
It seems to me these would be good with just about any dried fruit, nuts, seeds, or even some kind of candy like M&Ms. Someone also said something about replacing half the syrup/honey with a low sugar apricot jam. Not sure about that, it seems to me it would burn too easily. But dates, figs, cranberries, blueberries, or even ginger might work well as would nuts like walnuts, pecans, almonds, or filberts or seeds like sunflower or pumpkin. Or just a store bought trail mix.
The recipe calculator tells me that this recipe, cut into 8 squares, is 300 calories per square with 13.25 g fat (20% RDA) and 44.25 g carbs (14% RDA with 3.15 g fiber and 23.5 g sugar). So this isn’t something you’d want to eat as a matter of course, but as cycling nosh, it looks pretty good.
But then again Redbones is catering so I probably don’t need them at all.
