{"id":1899,"date":"2008-11-29T18:30:52","date_gmt":"2008-11-29T18:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/justthesam.com\/2008\/11\/the-quest-for-the-perfect-flapjack\/"},"modified":"2008-11-29T18:30:52","modified_gmt":"2008-11-29T18:30:52","slug":"the-quest-for-the-perfect-flapjack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/justthesam.com\/?p=1899","title":{"rendered":"The Quest for the Perfect Flapjack"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#39;ve almost always been disappointed with bought flapjacks, or flapjacks made by other people &#8211; because I have a very particular vision in my mind of how the perfect flapjack should be, which is apparently different to everyone else&#39;s. To me, perfection is golden, sweet, initially slightly brittle yet yielding to become jaw-achingly chewy. The overriding flavour should be oats and golden syrup. Putting flour in a flapjack is anathema of course &#8211; this is a chewy, oaty treat, not a soft cake!<\/p>\n<div>So I set out to create the perfect flapjack by starting with a basic recipe and modifying till I found nirvana in a baking tin. My first effort was just a straightforward attempt to act as a benchmark, using the following straightforward approach, modified from several I found across the internet:<\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">125g Whole rolled jumbo oats<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">125g Oatmeal (because all whole oats is apparently a bit much)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">150g butter<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">75g Golden syrup (the single most important ingredient &#8211; Tate &amp; Lyle of course)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">75g caster sugar (I used golden caster sugar)<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><br \/>\nMelt the butter, syrup and sugar together in a pan, add everything else, stir together than put into a 20*20cm tin lined with baking parchment. Put in oven at 175c for 20mins or so, but if you&#39;re oven&#39;s anything like mine you really need to keep an eye on it!<\/span><\/p>\n<div><span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><br \/><\/span><\/div>\n<div>Here are the before and after going in the oven shots:<\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/justthesam.com\/wp-content\/tp\/6a00e5550e0158883401053622cb4c970b\" onclick=\"window.open( this.href, &#39;_blank&#39;, &#39;width=640,height=480,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0&#39; ); return false\" style=\"display: inline;\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"FlapjackRaw\" class=\"at-xid-6a00e5550e0158883401053622cb4c970b \" src=\"http:\/\/justthesam.com\/wp-content\/tp\/6a00e5550e0158883401053622cb4c970b-300wi\" style=\"width: 300px; \" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/justthesam.com\/wp-content\/tp\/6a00e5550e0158883401053622cb19970b\" onclick=\"window.open( this.href, &#39;_blank&#39;, &#39;width=640,height=480,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0&#39; ); return false\" style=\"display: inline;\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"FlapjackCooked\" class=\"at-xid-6a00e5550e0158883401053622cb19970b \" src=\"http:\/\/justthesam.com\/wp-content\/tp\/6a00e5550e0158883401053622cb19970b-300wi\" style=\"width: 300px; \" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: left;\">Looked pretty good and tasted OK, with decent chewy texture, but not the flavour I was after &#8211; just not enough golden syrupyness coming through.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: left;\">So I tried again, this time using much more syrup and much less butter (they were a bit greasy first time). I also threw in a handful of sultanas to add moist chewiness and flavour. After only 15 minutes it was &#39;done&#39; and came out looking like this:<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/justthesam.com\/wp-content\/tp\/6a00e5550e015888340105362b1f21970c\" onclick=\"window.open( this.href, &#39;_blank&#39;, &#39;width=640,height=480,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0&#39; ); return false\" style=\"display: inline;\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"FlapjackBurnt\" class=\"at-xid-6a00e5550e015888340105362b1f21970c \" src=\"http:\/\/justthesam.com\/wp-content\/tp\/6a00e5550e015888340105362b1f21970c-400wi\" style=\"width: 400px; \" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: left;\">It took some serious effort to cut it into those few pieces, but I gave up after that. Those black blobs are the sultanas, embedded within the concrete that was the &#39;improved&#39; flapjack. Honestly you could have made houses with this stuff. I think I know what the butter&#39;s for now! The experiment will continue&#8230;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#39;ve almost always been disappointed with bought flapjacks, or flapjacks made by other people &#8211; because I have a very particular vision in my mind of how the perfect flapjack should be, which is apparently different to everyone else&#39;s. To me, perfection is golden, sweet, initially slightly brittle yet yielding to become jaw-achingly chewy. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food-and-drink"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justthesam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justthesam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justthesam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justthesam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justthesam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/justthesam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1899\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justthesam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justthesam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justthesam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}