Vegan Flapjacks

At university, flapjacks were my baking item of choice as the ovens in our houses were not often very reliable. I also didn’t own scales and the recipe didn’t need many ingredients. Plus they satisfied my sugar cravings! I used to measure the ingredients out in a jug, guessing the quantities really but getting my own method down to a science. Since getting my own scales for the first time only about a year and a half a ago (shocking I know) I’ve converted my guesstimates into a measured out recipe which it’s the one I’ve used here, with a tiny change to make them vegan!

Why vegan? Well, my best friend is a vegan and since cooking, baking and food shopping with her, I’ve found it really interesting what is included in foods that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to be there. For example, some pickled onions use milk powder as part of the preservative, as do salt and vinegar crisps. However, many ‘meat’ flavoured crisps such as steak or prawn cocktail flavour are vegan, go figure. 

Turning this recipe vegan is super easy as I just swapped my usual dairy butter to dairy free margarine. This is readily available from all supermarkets and you can use it as regular spread while dairy spreads like Flora are not suitable for baking. As I said earlier, the whole recipe is very simple, the hardest part is getting the golden syrup off the spoon and not leaving syrup lines from the tin to the pan! Running boiling water over the spoon before and after each spoonful helps with this, though avoiding the syrup lines is down to you.

The recipe I’ve done here is for the most basic flapjack, however, you can of course add anything to them you like. Some popular examples are chocolate chips, nuts, dried fruit and desiccated coconut. As for the quantities of these extra ingredients, that’s entirely up to you. Make them as chocolatey, nutty, fruity or coconutty as you like!

Here is my flapjack recipe:

175g dairy free margarine (butter)

125g demerara sugar

2 tbsp golden syrup

275g rolled oats

Preheat the oven to 160°C

Melt the margarine, sugar and golden syrup completely in a saucepan on a low heat

Add the rolled oats and mix well until completely combined

Pour the mixture into a pre-greased tin and bake in the oven for 20-25minutes. (When you take them out of the oven, cut them into squares straight away and then leave to cool before you take them out of the tin)

Then Lick Your Spoon!