Chocolate Flapjack

I recently won a competition set by Choclette at Chocolate Log Blog. The prize was donated by Dorset Cereals, and I was surprised, as well as delighted, to receive 6 x 600g packs of their new chocolate granolas (3 of each variety), plus a hessian shopping bag and a breakfast bowl.

The problem is that the while the granolas are absolutely delicious, they are much richer and more calorific than our usual meagre breakfasts! They are much higher in calories than my husband's Bran Flakes, and I only have a banana for breakfast. This Chocolate Granola contains over 19% sugar and 30% fat! Much of this is explained by the 14% plain chocolate and 10% coconut, but, as we are both prone to gaining weight too easily at this time of our lives, we just can't eat afford the calorie intake of eating them for breakfast.

The answer is to use them as desserts, and to bake with them. Occasional desserts and one portion of my baking is factored into our daily intake, so we are just replacing like with like here! (Well, it makes sense to me!) A spoonful or two sprinkled over yogurt makes a delicious mid-week dessert, and my first foray into using them in baking produced this delicious chocolate flapjack. I based the recipe on my usual flapjack recipe, but altered the amounts of the ingredients to compensate for the amounts of sugar and fat already in the granola. I also used some raw oats, which I thought would be more absorbant than the granola and would help bind the mixture together.

The result is a slightly crisp but still chewy flapjack which is really tasty and definitely too tempting! The only improvement I could think of, to make it even better for chocoholics, is to add 100g of chocolate chips to the mixture - the chocolate in the granola is spread evenly over the cereal clumps, not in discrete pieces. I could probably cut down the butter slightly more without affecting the chewiness or the ability of the bar to hold together well, but we don't make flapjacks if we are too worried about healthy eating, do we?

Ingredients

200g butter

100g golden syrup

50g light muscovado sugar

400g Dorset Cereals Chocolate Granola

100g rolled oats

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 180C. Line a 30 x 20 cm (12 x 8") baking tin (at least 2.5cm (1 inch)deep) with one piece of baking paper, folding it into the corners, and letting it come slightly higher than the sides of the tin, so that none of the flapjack mixture will touch the tin.

In a large bowl, melt the butter, syrup and sugar together in the microwave, on high. This took just over 2 minutes in my microwave. Then stir in the granola and oats, and mix until evenly blended.

Tip the mixture into the tin and spread evenly, pressing down with the back of a spoon. Bake for 20 minutes. After cooling for 5 minutes, use a sharp knife to cut into squares or bars of a suitable size (I cut into 18 pieces), but cool completely before removing from tin.