the chewy British tray bake: rolled oats bound with butter, golden syrup, and brown sugar, baked until golden at the edges and cut into squares while still warm
Origin: England, United Kingdom
From the journey of Oat.
The flapjack is one of the most enduring of all British home bakes, and one of the simplest: rolled oats stirred into a molten mixture of butter, golden syrup, and sugar, pressed into a tin, and baked until set and golden. It is a thing of the tuck shop, the lunchbox, the church fête, and the biscuit tin, and its appeal lies in the chew and the toffee-ish flavour that the golden syrup gives to the oats. In British English, confusingly for Americans (to whom a flapjack is a pancake), the word means only this oat tray bake, and it has done since at least the sixteenth century, though the modern syrup-bound version belongs to the age of cheap sugar and golden syrup, from the later nineteenth century onward. The whole art of the flapjack is in the balance of its binding and in the baking time, for these decide whether it is chewy or crunchy, soft or hard. Golden syrup, the pale treacle that is a fixture of the British larder, is essential to the classic flavour and to the chew; it also, being an invert sugar, keeps the flapjack moist. The mixture is barely a recipe, more a ratio, and it is endlessly adapted: with a handful of dried fruit or seeds, with a layer of chocolate on top, with ginger or with the zest of an orange. The single most important rule is to cut it while it is still warm from the oven but to lift the pieces out only once it is completely cold, for a flapjack cut cold shatters and one lifted warm falls apart. Baked pale it is soft and chewy; baked darker it is firm and crunchy, and which is correct is, like so much in British baking, a matter of fierce and affectionate disagreement.
The ratio of butter, sugar, and syrup to oats can be adjusted to taste: more syrup gives a chewier, stickier flapjack; less, a drier, crumblier one. Jumbo rolled oats give a more rugged texture, standard rolled oats a neater one; do not use instant oats, which turn to paste. Popular additions include a layer of melted chocolate spread over the cooled flapjack, chopped stem ginger, dried cranberries, or mixed seeds. A pinch of salt is not traditional but sharpens the flavour considerably against the sweetness.
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