Gooey Flapjacks With a Dark Chocolate Drizzle

Don't you just love recipes that are uber simple to make but taste like you must have slaved over them for hours?  Flapjacks definitely fall into this category for me, they're so quick, don't need lots of unusual ingredients and taste like a little piece of heaven.

On Saturday afternoon I was planning what food to take on a day at Brands Hatch on Sunday and thought it would be nice to have a little treat in the lunch bag.  A quick flick through a recipe book for inspiration and flapjacks hit me as the perfect solution as they're quick to make, I already had the ingredients and they would be easy to transport.  An hour later they were all done, did I mention they are quick?

Ingredients:

6oz butter
5oz syrup
2oz muscovado sugar, dark or light are both fine
1oz honey
10oz oats
2oz dark chocolate

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C  or 160°C  for a fan oven.

2. Take a square 9 inch baking tin e.g. a brownie tin, and grease and line it with baking paper.  It's worth taking the time to do this so that you can easily lift your flapjacks out at the end.  I'm often lazy about lining tins but in this case I always do it.

3. In a medium sized pan melt the butter, syrup, honey and muscavado sugar over a medium heat so that the butter and sugar melt.  Stir regularly whilst they're melting until you're left with a dark, smooth sauce that frankly looks and smells like it should be just eaten right out the pan.  Don't do this though, it will be hot and you'll have no flapjacks.

4. Add your oats to the pan and stir well until they are thoroughly coated in the sugary mixture.  Mmmm, looks so good already.

5. Spoon the oaty mixture into your baking tin and press it down so that it is evenly spread throughout the tin, making sure if fills the corners nicely or someone will get a duff corner piece and be sad.

6. Bake for 20 - 25 minutes and then remove from the oven, leaving the flapjacks in the tin.  The longer you bake them the crunchier your flapjacks will be so if like me you prefer them nice and gooey then stick to 20 - 22 minutes.

7. After the flapjacks have been cooling for 5 or 10 minutes, take a sharp knife and mark them out into squares.  I like to make them quite small then I can have more of them and feel very indulgent.  Still leave them in the tin though until they are cool as otherwise they might start to break apart a bit.

8. Melt the dark chocolate gently and once it is nice and runny drizzle it over your flapjacks so that you get a little bit of a coating, but it's just an accent, not a chocolate flapjack.  Leave to cool.

9. Once the chocolate and the flapjacks are completely cool cut them up properly and remove from the tin.  Store them in an airtight container if they don't all get eaten straight away.

Top tip - don't forget that you have to add your oats when selecting which pan to use.  Otherwise you end up with a pan that's too small and you have to stir really carefully to avoid throwing the oats all over the bench.  Not that I'm speaking from experience here or anything ;)