Friday 14 March 2014

birthday baking

For Adi's last two birthdays I baked him these chocolate cakes:


This year I didn't really feel up to baking and his mum kindly brought over a chocolate cake earlier in the week, so I decided to try and do a Monica. Adi loves flapjack, or in his words 'crunch'. His gran used to make crunchy flapjack, whereas I've been brought up on the chewy variety. I've always kept to my ways and made it how my mum does and how I like it, but being his birthday, I thought I'd try to work out how to make a crispy version more like his gran's, who is sadly no longer here to pass on her recipe and cooking wisdom.

A quick Google search suggested that it wasn't rocket science. All I had to do was use a shallow tray, put it on the top shelf rather than in the middle of the oven and bake for a bit longer. The cooling process should also be done in the tin rather than on the cooling rack.


I used the recipe from the Stork cookery book - a book that both my mum and nanna use and the way baking is done in our family - with margarine rather than butter and an extra dollop of golden syrup for good measure.


I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome from my first attempt. I came downstairs today and Adi had already sneakily tried a bit and said that it was great and a better attempt than his mum's (sorry Bev). He even insisted I leave the crumbly bits from the tin that he was picking at.

I'm not going to leave it there and will try to work out how to get it even closer to his gran's, I'm thinking she probably used butter so that may be a start. If you have any suggestions or recipes let me know!



*If you're thinking of trying crispy flapjack a word of advice, ensure the tray is very well greased and that you cut well around the sides before cooling. I had to resort to a pizza cutter to get it out of the tin at the sides which I don't think my tray is best pleased about.

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