New flapjack recipe

Flapjack in the British sense is very different from what we Americans call "flapjacks" - our flapjacks are pancakes. British Flapjack is kind of like a cross between a granola bar and a cookie, and I like it very much.

I had been using the recipe in "The Gentle Art of Domesticity" but suspected that in the Metric-to-Imperial measurement translation, something went wrong, because they always came out WAY too much caramel and butter.

My mom sent me the recipe she's been using - off of the Lyle's Golden Syrup website. She did have to translate to our measurements, but her translation seems to have worked. These have a higher proportion of oats to butter, which makes them more of a bar cookie and less of a "pool of hardened caramel with oats in it."

I love these things. I'm sure they're not that great for you, but then again, few things that taste really good are. I like making them because they're simpler than most cookies: you don't have to cream together butter and sugar, and there's no messing around with raw egg. (Also - for people who are egg-allergic, they work. And I THINK - provided the Golden Syrup is gluten-free - they'd be gluten-free for people with Celiac, because you can even get gluten-free-certified oats.)

What you do is:

Melt 1/4 cup plus 1-2 Tablespoons butter in a saucepan. Add 3/8 cup of brown sugar and 3 Tablespoons of Golden Syrup. (I suppose, if you can't get Golden Syrup - though many groceries carry it now, and you can order it from Amazon - you could probably use honey, but the flapjack would taste different).

When that's well-combined, you add 2 1/2 cups rolled oats (either the long-cooking or the quick-cooking). You can add other things if you like. I like to add 1/2 cup of toasted slivered almonds and maybe a teaspoon and a half of Penzey's "Cake Spice," which is similar to apple pie spice. You could also add raisins or coconut or other nuts or even chocolate chips. If you add much other stuff, you may need to add a bit more butter and syrup.

Then, when it's all combined, press it into a well-greased 8 x 8 pan and bake for 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees. It's best to at least score the bars while they're still warm; they can be hard to cut after they've cooled and set up.

I like the way they taste - it's nice to have a little square of the stuff with a cup of tea in the afternoon - and I really like how simple they are to make. (If you were feeding a lot of people, you could probably double the recipe and do it in a 9 x 13 pan, though you might have to "shield" the edges with foil to keep them from getting overdone while the center finished baking).

In a way, they're like a more-sophisticated version of the old marshmallow-rice-krispie bars.