Mincemeat Flapjacks

I'd planned to make mincemeat shortbread from Sue Lawrence's book 'On Baking', but we were suffering from an unscheduled cut in our water supply, which meant I couldn't do anything which was going to make my hands really sticky - such as rubbing fat into flour, or handling biscuit dough. Luckily I found a recipe for mincemeat flapjacks a bit further on in the book, and decided I could make the recipe without touching any of the ingredients in a way which would need me to wash my hands. Just a quick wipe with a hand sanitiser afterwards and all was well. The flapjacks were made in one saucepan too, which minimised the washing up - useful when you can't actually wash-up at all!

Ingredients
225g mincemeat
170g butter
285g golden syrup
the grated zest of 1 orange
425g porridge oats

Method
Pre-heat oven to 180C and line a baking tin roughly 20 x 30cm (8 x 12") with baking parchment, using one piece big enough to come up the sides of the tin too.
Melt the mincemeat, butter and golden syrup together in a large pan, over a low heat, stirring often.
When the butter has melted remove the pan from the heat and add the orange zest and oats. Mix everything together thoroughly.
Transfer the oat mixture to the baking tin and spread evenly, pressing down firmly. Bake for 25-30 minutes until golden brown.
Mark into pieces while still warm, but cool completely before removing from tin.

The smell while these flapjacks were baking was fantastic, and they tasted pretty good too. There wasn't a large amount of mincemeat in the recipe but it was enough to give quite a strong flavour. The mincemeat I used was quite citrussy, so it was complemented by the added orange zest. My usual flapjack recipe uses more sugar than golden syrup, whereas this recipe uses mainly golden syrup plus the sugar in the mincemeat. The end result was very similar, as these flapjacks were also nice and chewy - they were perhaps just a little softer than those I usually make.