Because it’s the weekend and we all need a bit of comfort food, here is my latest flapjack creation recipe. It’s packed with pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, goji berries, linseeds and chia seeds.
This recipe is so brilliant because it doesn’t require any creaming of sugar and fat, you simply melt the wet ingredients in a pan, then mix in your oats.
What you’ll need…
- One large saucepan
- One wooden spoon
- Kitchen scales
- Baking parchment
- 1 x flapjack tin 30×20 cm or 12×8 inches (I used two but prefer thicker flapjacks)
Ingredients from your cupboard
- 300g of Pure sunflower spread
- 120g of demerara sugar
- 2 large tablespoons of blackstrap mollasses
- 5 cups of oats (make sure you get gluten free oats)
- 1/2 cup of ground pumpkin and sunflower seeds with goji berries (you could substitute the whole seeds here for extra crunch)
- Tablespoon of ground linseeds
- 1/2 cup of chia seeds
How to make What Allergy? pumpkin, sunflower, goji berry and chia seed flapjacks
- Pre heat your oven to 160c, 350f
- Line your baking trays with baking parchment and grease with pure
- First put the pure spread, sugar and mollasses into the pan and heat on a low temperature until the sugar has melted.
- Mix with a wooden spoon until you have completely coated the oats.
- Spead the mixture into the lined tins and press it down and into each corner.
- Bake for 20-25 minutes until golden brown.
- Score with a knife while it’s still hot then leave to cool.
- And enjoy! – Cut into pieces once cool and store in an airtight container.
I absolutely love flapjacks and homemade ones are always so much more tasty than shop bought. You can experiment with adding dried fruit, chopped dates and prunes work really well with pumpkin seeds.
Using chia seeds is so much fun.
They start out like little tiny black seeds but when they’re cooked they become burnished and shine like little silver, grey marbled jewels.
They are also really good for you, one of those new superfoods. Shame you can’t see the properly in this photo. My bad photography.
Using blackstrap mollasses is also fantastic in flapjacks. It’s like black treacle and is also a source of calcium. 100g contains 50% of your recommended daily allowance of calcium so use it in baking, mix it into your porridge and enjoy the beneficial nutients of sugar cane.
It’s natural, unsulphured and much better than white and brown sugar.
These flapjacks are so tasty and pretty healthy as a naughty snack. They also have the added benefit for people with allergies because they are gluten, dairy, soya and nut free, but certainly not taste free.
What’s your favourite flapjack?
Hi Ruth, these sound yummy and I was just looking for ways to advise more blackstrap molasses for my iron-deficient coeliacs. But what could we use instead of the oats do you think – I don’t advise them as part of GF diet as you know? You have made me hungry!
Hmmm… Now you’ve got me thinking Micki, I wonder if you could make them with coconut oil and just seeds. And also coconut flakes might work. I haven’t tried this myself without oats. And I wonder if you could bake quinoa into a flapjack? or possibly use rice flakes. I can feel an experiment coming on.
Hey – I am having to think with this new numerical captcha. Am crap at maths!
Ooh, yes, pls do experiment. I know nut flour would work but you wouldn’t get the flapjacky texture would you? Coconut flakes: good idea. Might try that with some coconut flour maybe. I am sitting here eating coconut macaroons which are nice anyway. Little drops of sweetness. Yum.
I know, the maths every time I log in. Driving me nuts, but it is stopping the immense deluge of spam comments I was getting though some still get through, I can’t do nuts but might be able to do almonds soon. Doing a test when I get the courage and a reaction free period in which to regain strength. I will let you know how I get on when this batch has been dispatched. Now I’m hungry… I need flapjack.
Ooh yum! We’ve just discovered blackstrap molasses too. Micki- can I ask why you don’t recommend gf oats for coeliacs?
I don’t recommend any grain for coeliacs generally, Kate. According to the stats, most coeliacs do not heal their villi sufficiently even after years on a strict GF diet and my opinion is that some can be sensitive to any type of gluten, not just to the gliadins removed in a traditional GF diet. That’s what my trulyglutenfree site is all about. Controversial, I know, but I have found in practice that some people are much better off all grains. I don’t know who those will be so I advise grain free esp in those not healing or still with symptoms, inflammatory or auto-immune conditions.
Micki, so what do you recommend to replace the roughage of grains? Are fruit and veg enough for a healthy diet and the fibre and carbs we need?
Yes, lots of fruit, veg, nuts, seeds, pulses etc will replace the fibre. I probably eat about 12 portions a day of those except pulses as off those anyway so I get plenty. You naturally eat much more healthily when the grains are out, I find!
I eat gluten free oats so will try making these. How about flaked rice for those of you who don’t or can’t eat oats? Would that work to you think? Or Sainabury’s do rice & buckwheat porridge so another option perhaps.
Or even Sainsbury’s!
Yes I’ve been thinking about this and maybe even coconut flakes (if you can eat them) would work. This my next experiment as I think it would work well with. Happy baking.
Yes that would be nice too, I can have coconut 🙂