help in making flapjacks

angeldaisy

can anyone help me? Everytime I make flapjacks they either end up too hard and burned or so crumbly you have to eat them with a spoon!

Found a lovely recipe in the Independent using rice crispies along with oats and dried fruit, I also added a couple of spoonfuls of chocolate chips. Problem is they were too crumbly to cut into bars properly. So, do I add more wet ingredients, like butter and golden syrup , or do I put in less dry ingredients?

Or... is there a secret trick to making them set properly??

Thanks..

Magic Monkey

If it's this recipe here you're using, compare it to one from Nigella here. The Independent uses a wet:dry ratio of 300g:425g, Nigella's is 365g:250g, which is twice the amount of wet ingredients to dry. So double the wet ingredient amounts for the Independent recipe, or halve the amount of dry ingredients, and see how that goes.

Dizzyblonde

When you're making flapjacks it's very important to pack the mix down well into the tin - I use the end of a glass to press it down. Then you need to mark out the slices with a knife while they're hot in order to be able to cut them when they cool.

www.odlums.ie is a great site for that kind of thing - their orange & apricot bars are really nice chewy flapjacks (though I use sultanas instead of apricots).

superficies

Agree with all of the above...can be a good idea to line tin with greaseproof paper, then put in mixture and smash down very tight with a glass, then can remove whole thing in greaseproof paper and cut up into bars. Make sure also to leave cool before you try to cut them into bars/squares. And to make them stick a bit better when increasing the wet materials try adding some melted butter/low fat spread and honey. The honey reduces the amount of sugar you need to use, especially if you also use some dried fruit that's naturally sweet. Thus, slightly healthier as well as sticking together a bit better!

angeldaisy

thanks for all the tips. i tried again yesterday and increased the wet ingredients and slightly decreased the dry - it worked better, although I got distracted whilst they were cooking and slightly burnt it. oh well next time...