Prunes are the perfect way to make a sweet chewy flapjack a little bit more wholesome.
These chocolate and prune flapjacks, which are definitely at the chewy end of the flapjack spectrum, couldn’t be much easier to make. The only ‘complicated’ part is soaking the prunes in vanilla extract beforehand, if you have time.
The vanilla enhances the prunes, giving them a rich caramel flavour that complements the dark chocolate.
Prunes, while famous for fibre, bring a range of health benefits including reducing cholesterol and improving bone density. Ironically, they’ve also been associated with reduced skin wrinkling in at least one study.
Having said all that stuff about prunes, these will also work well with raisins, or just as chewy chocolate flapjacks without any dried fruit!
While there’s no denying these are sweet, largely due to the volume of golden syrup, each of the pictured flapjacks (9 squares cut from a 7″ square tray) also contains over 25g of oats – almost as much as a one of those little sachets of instant porridge oats.
Chocolate and prune flapjacks…
Ingredients
- 100 g coconut oil
- 230 g rolled oats
- 135 g golden syrup
- 30 g muscovado sugar
- 25 g cocoa powder
- 60 g ready-to-eat prunes
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 60 g dark (non-dairy) chocolate
Method
- Chop the prunes into chunks smaller than 1cm across, toss them in the vanilla extract in a small bowl and leave to soak – ideally for a few hours until the vanilla extract has been absorbed, but it won’t make a huge difference if you only soak them for a short while.
- Set the oven to 180°C/360°F and lighltly oil or line a suitable tin. The pictured flapjacks were made in a 7″ square tin. An 8″ tin would also work well.
- Chop the chocolate into chunks no smaller than half a centimetre across.
- Melt the coconut oil in a large bowl or pan together with the golden syrup.
- Stir in the sugar and cocoa, followed by the oats, prunes and lastly the chocolate chunks.
- Transfer to the baking tin and press with the back of a spoon until you have a fairly even surface. Try to avoid having large pieces of prune on the surface, as they bake quite hard if exposed directly to the heat of the oven.
- Bake for 22 to 25 minutes, until the flapjacks are just starting to turn a little darker at the edges.
- Mark the flapjacks out with a knife while the mixture is still warm, cutting halfway through to the base, then finish the cutting once they have cooled completely.
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