Homemade flapjack
There are plenty of amazing flapjacks recipes out there with seeds, nuts, fruit and other additions but it is not always easy to find a good traditional flapjack recipe. I am a purist and don’t think flour has any place in a flapjack!
This is the recipe that I have been using since I was a child. I know it was a recipe cut out from the back of a box of oats (Scotts Porage Oats, I think) and lived in my mum’s recipe book. Saturday afternoons we would nearly always make something quick: flapjacks, traybakes, cupcakes, scones, and so on. Flapjacks have always been one of my favourites.
This was the easiest recipe to remember when everything was done in pounds and ounces: 8, 6, 4 and 1 (the 1 slightly messed it up but even so): 8oz oats, 6oz butter, 4oz Demerara sugar and 1 tablespoon golden syrup. I still can’t read or remember a recipe in grams as well as I can in ounces but I try!
If you have Demerara sugar, use it, as it makes all the difference. They are really not as good with granulated or soft brown sugar. Real butter instead of margarine is definitely preferable, and if you use unsalted butter add a little pinch of salt as the salt really lifts the taste.
Flapjacks are perfect as a last minute option if you have guests as they are quick and use store cupboard ingredients: no need for any eggs or unusual ingredients. Children love to make them: the only supervision they need is with the hob and the oven.
If you manage to give these a try I’d love to hear how you think they compare with your favourite flapjacks.
Traditional flapjacks
Recipe
Ingredients
175g butter
115g Demerara sugar
1 tablespoon golden syrup
225g porridge oats
Method
Set the oven to 180ºC. Grease and line a baking tray roughly 10″x7″.
Measure out the butter, sugar and syrup into a large pan.
Melt over a low heat until the butter has melted.
Add the oats and mix well to combine.
Tip the mixture into the baking tray and spread out. It is important to press the mixture down firmly and evenly with the back of a spoon, otherwise it will not hold together when baked.
Put into the oven and bake for roughly 20-25 minutes or until golden brown all over: take care not to burn around the edges.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the pan.
If you can resist it, it is much easier to cut the flapjack into squares or rectangles when cool.
Flapjacks
When I made these I thought I might have a few left over and checked online to see whether they could be frozen. The general consensus was that they could be, although as there weren’t any left over I haven’t had the opportunity to try it myself.
Happy Baking!
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Categories: Baking, Biscuits and Cookies, Recipes
lovinghomemade 
Oh, I love flapjacks! When I was a child I always used to buy one from our school canteen… I was a bit addicted to golden syrup 🙂 I love the fact that these are so simple to make (like you say, pretty much all these ingredients are in the cupboard already!). I’ll keep this recipe flagged for last minute treats! xx
Let me know what you think if make them!
Hi
I was looking for a recipe like this. When I was a child in the 1950’s my mother used to make Quaker Oat Fingers. Butter Demerara sugar golden syrup and Quaker Oats. Hers were a lot more toffee coloured than the ones in your photo, so I suppose there weren’t so many oats in her recipe. Really chewy and sticky. Delicious
Hi, thank you for your comment! Hope you enjoy these
Hey. After a history of disasters with flapjacks I settled on this recipe as I liked the idea of using demerara over the usual light brown. I added a tablespoon of flax seed powder. Freeze dried raspberries and about 50g of chopped hazelnuts. Using a square pan it came neatly to the top once pressed down firmly. It’s currently baking in the oven but the mixture tasted fantastic. So many flapjack recipes have obscene amounts of syrup in so it’s lovely to be able to taste all the ingredients instead of just intense sugar. I cant see why they won’t bake well and then they will be cooled cut and wrapped for my other half to take to work. Thanks again 🙂
That sounds absolutely delicious, thank you for your comment!
I’ve bought flapjacks, made flapjacks but never quite found that elusive flavour and texture that I remember from the flapjacks my late mother used to make more than 50 yrs. ago. She didn’t have any recipe books but did have a collection of scraps of paper and card cut from magazines and cereal boxes so, being brought up on breakfasts of Scott’s Porage Oats, it seemed a fair bet that this was the recipe she would have used. And—Bingo!!!!!!! At last the perfect, delicious flapjack of my childhood. Thank you – these will be a regular in my baking from now on.
Thank you very much for your comment and I’m really glad that you have found your recipe at last. No doubt there are other old family recipes we share!
Oh my goodness! I lost my flapjack recipe that I’ve been using for years, but as i haven’t had a request for making them in about 5 years, i forgot what the recipe was. Well, i won’t be using that one again if i find it, you’re recipe is much tastier and lovely and moist. Thank you for sharing it.
Thank you very much for your lovely comment, glad you like them!
Hi! The taste is really really great! I love it! But I don’t know, what am I doing wrong, it’s always crunchy,and not chewy as I like and expected…
Hi, thank you very much for your comment and apologies for taking so long to get back to you. If your flapjack is always crunchy it’s possible you have your oven on too hot – it might be worth reducing it by 10 or 20 degrees and seeing if that helps. Or maybe just reducing the time it is in the oven. Let me know how you get on!
I have been using this flapjack recipe for 20 years and somehow mislaid it and could not remember in my head the correct amounts. I rang Scotts to see if they could provide me with the recipe but they only offered a newer version which uses 5 tablespoons of golden syrup!! So lovely to find it again, the ladies of my sewing group will be very pleased. Thanks. Pauline, Dorset
Thank you very much for your comment – so glad I could help. It really is the best ever recipe!
This made me laugh – I have long regretted the loss of the tattered old cardboard cut-out of the Scotts porridge oats box recipe for flapjacks that lived slotted in the back of mums equally tattered ‘Be-Ro cookbook’ Both book and cut-out were such a huge part of my childhood and I must have made those flapjacks every couple of weeks plus Rice Biscuits and Jam Tarts from the BeRo book. You’d think it’d have stayed in my memory but all I remember is ‘8oz oats’ and always thinking what a big pile of oats that made. The majority of the mixture would invariably get eaten directly from the saucepan before it ever went near mums oven. Anyway I had given up hope of ever finding that very recipe since that box of oats must’ve dated back to the late ’70’s but you’ve saved the day! Thank you! These are the best flapjacks by far! Quite agree – flour, seeds chocolate – they have no place in a flapjack. Im now enjoying making them again (and eating the mixture) with my kids! Helen
Thank you, I’m so glad you’ve found the recipe again: it’s funny how seemingly small and random things can be a part of different people’s childhoods! Ours and now our kid’s too! X
I’ve been searching for this recipe since I was a child! Thank you! Just about to make them and enter them in our village show on Saturday!!
Hi, I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you – thank you very much for your comment and would love to know how you got on in the village show!
Hi
Sadly I didn’t do very well – it was too goo-ey for them – but I love it!
Thank you!
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Surely gooey is good! X
This recipe is just perfect, thankyou!
Thank you, glad you’re enjoying it!
Found it! I too made my flapjacks from a recipe taken from a box of Scotts porridge oats & I too lost it & contacted Scotts who sent me a flapjack recipe but I knew just looking at it that it wasn’t the right one. When I saw your recipe I knew immediately that it was the one! Even the 8,6,4 & 1 brought back a memory. One time I only had 6ozs of oats so made it up to the 8ozs with crushed cornflakes & continued this way as it makes them not quite so soft. Thank you so much.
Ooh, cornflakes sounds like a good idea too! Thank you very much for your comments, glad you managed to find the recipe in the end.
My oven is a fan oven but I wrote this post when I had an older fan oven and it didn’t make much difference to the temperature. I know some fan ovens are quite aggressive! I do most things in my current oven at 175 fan which is generally good – sorry to not be more precise!
Re your flapjacks – is your 180 fan or conventional? My above post should read Scott’s porage oats!