Christmas Flapjack

What makes them Christmas flapjack? Adding Christmas spices, a slug of rum and eating a big fat slice of it with an iced Baileys on the side! Flapjack is a really simple thing to make – a supervised 10 year old could have a fair stab at it – and it’s not expensive. I don’t think a large tray full would set you back much more than 3 quid, excluding the rum, of course, which is optional (especially for 10 year olds).

Ingredients

8oz block of butter

1 cup golden syrup

1 cup brown sugar

1 kg oats

1 tsp cinammon

1/2 tsp ground star anise (grind your own if you can’t find it – pods an’ all)

1/2 tsp ground cardamom (as above)

2 cloves

1 tsp sea salt

Slug of rum or whiskey (optional)

You will need a standard sized shallow roasting tin – or two smaller ones, or whatever you’ve got – greased and lined.

Method 

Melt all the ingredients, apart from the oats, together in a large heavy bottomed pan. Stir it with a wooden spoon to get everything going. When it’s all melted, bring it to the boil and boil it hard for two minutes (this will make the flapjack more sticky and gooey).

Pour in the oats and give your arm a good work out mixing them thoroughly into melted ingredients. It will, and should, take a bit of elbow grease. Spread the mixture into your tin or tins and bake at 180 degrees centigrade or gas mark 4 for 20 – 25 mins. Don’t pack the mixture down, it’s tempting to do so to make it look neat but the mixture will settle anyway, so if you just rake it into the corners and make it reasonably level you’ll end up with a more open textured flapjack instead of an oat brick.

When it comes out of the oven mark it into whatever size pieces you want fairly soon but don’t actually try and lift it out of the tin until it’s completely cool.

It’s only flapjack but with the addition of the spices and a glass of Baileys it’s Christmas milk and cookies for grown ups. Or Santa.