There are a few things that must be done on Bonfire night. These are The Law according to me:
- You must eat baked beans even if you don’t like them.
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You must eat a jacket potato out of foil and with a plastic fork. It should be so scalding hot you will try and blow the hot air from your mouth.
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You must wear something woollen, preferably mittens, but a hat or gloves are also acceptable. You get extra points if the mittens are attached to each other by a long piece of string that passes though the arms of your coat.
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You must write your name using a sparkler and be disappointed when the first letter disappears before the last one is written. Unless you name is Bob or Tim or Fay in which case you may have time.
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You must have a bad Catharine Wheel experience. A phut phut whizz, plonk.
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You must eat the toffee from a toffee apple in an undainty fashion, discarding the mealy apple for wildlife to snack on.
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You must try and have a conversation about hedgehogs hiding in bonfires. This conversation may include reminiscing about Blue Peter programmes from your childhood.
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You should say ‘oooh’ and ‘aaah’ a lot. Obviously.
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If you go to an organised show you must moan about how quickly the fireworks are over.
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Re: the above Law; all the adults must have a converastion about how expensive fireworks are.
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If you put on a show and a ‘spread’ at home you should serve warm soup, possibly chilli and cold beer. Dads or Person Pretending Not To Be Afraid of Fireworks should do a lot of crouched running from the back of the garden to the back door. It’s The Law.
Onto the recipe; enough of these laws and rules. This recipe is not a family tradition. It’s something I came up with when I should have been doing something else. So it actually is kind of rule breaking. Except it’s a recipe, so it’s not a rule breaker as it relies on measuring and weighing things properly. Please note, if you weigh out your ingredients wrongly with unreliable scales, the flapjack may well be a bit gloopy or a bit ungloopy. It’s all good, but beware, as weighing syrup and treacle is hard. In that it’s easy to pour too much in.
There is one thing I am going to warn you about in a serious voice; this flapjack is in parts stuck together solid as rock, and in parts not so stuck together – it’s all dependant on the toffee distribution. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Just scoop it all up and eat it like a piglet.
Makes about 9 reasonable slices though depends on the size of your tin/silicone thingy.
NB: If you are using a proper old fashioned tin then grease and line it first please.
Ingredients:
- 175g butter
- 40g treacle
- 100g golden syrup
- 50g light muscavado sugar
- 275g oats
- 18 soft toffees (I used the really cheap ones from Sainsbos for 27p I think as they seemed softest when I squidged them)
Preheat the oven to Gas 4/180C. Take the butter, treacle, golden syrup and sugar and pop into a large saucepan. Melt together on a medium heat until all dissolved. Remove from the heat and add the oats. Stir, stir, stir until all the oats are covered.
There are two ways you can approach the toffee distribution. I just chucked all my toffees in, stirred and then spooned the lot into a silicone tray bake thing (20 x 25cm), leveled it with the back of a spoon and baked for about 25 minutes. This works fine. When the flapjack is ready and starting to crisp up around the edges (watch this if you are using a different sized tray) I removed it, then let it cool for about 10 minutes.
Then, now this IS important, next I scored out 9 portions through to the bottom of the tray using a blunt knife. You need to do this whilst the toffee is still molten. If you don’t you will just have one huge treacle toffee flapjack that will stubbornly refuse to be cut. This isn’t an issue if you feed your family a bit like I like to feed Canada Geese – making them fight over one large piece of bread/flapjack. It is an issue if you’re a little more civilised. Once cut, simply let it cool and eat with a sparkler in one hand.
If you prefer to be a bit more uniform in your toffee distribution you can, pre baking, level the flapjack into the tray then add toffees at regular intervals, perhaps in the middle of each flapjack-square-to-be. Then bake. This way you don’t have to worry about the scoring after baking. It’s up to you. You know what kind of baker you are.
Have fun on bonfire night! Don’t forget to check for hedgehogs.
Holly Bell 