Maple and Cinnamon Flapjacks

Now that I've been living in my new flat for a couple of weeks, I thought it was about time to try out my new oven. And, in the process of moving, I realised quite how extensive my baking equipment and ingredient stock is so I had better start baking again! However, my first bake had to be something simple as it was destined for disaster using new appliances, so I baked some autumnal flavoured flapjacks. I may have used the term 'simple', but it turns out that my reputation for making silly mistakes is definitely still appropriate as I seemed to have an inability to correctly weigh out oats and almost ended up baking a mix of melted sugar, butter and maple syrup with half the oat quantity. I then discovered that my oven has two fan settings (I am loving having a fan oven after 3 years of using a convection oven and my bakes never going brown) and the first setting I tried didn't heat it up. Lesson learnt, and at least I wasn't baking a light sponge cake!

The excitement of baking mishaps aside, these flapjacks have a crunchy exterior and a chewy centre, and a lovely earthy maple flavour with a hint of spice. If you like your flapjacks chewier bake for a shorter length of time, or if you like them with the texture of biscuits, just bake for 5 minutes longer. Also, an important tip is to cut the flapjack about 5 minutes after it has been removed from the oven else it will just crumble or you may alternatively have to eat the whole thing in one go!

Recipe - Serves 8

• 50g butter
• 60g demerara sugar
• 40ml maple syrup
• 110g oats
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 180C and line a 6 inch square baking tin with baking paper. Meanwhile, put the butter, sugar and maple syrup into a pan and place over a medium heat, stirring to melted. Tip in the oats and cinnamon and mix well. Pour into the tin and bake for 20 minutes or until lightly browned.

Remove from the oven and leave in the tin for 5 minutes to cool. Lift the baking paper out of the tin, cut the flapjack into triangles with a sharp knife, then lift the baking paper onto a baking tray to cool.