I get cacao powder from Sainsburys.
This is the basic recipe I use, then I mess around a bit so I might reduce the oats by 50g and add in 50g of a mix of almonds, pistachios, cashews, pumpkin seed, sunflower seed, linseed, coconut all chopped up really small. For the dried fruit I always do 75g dates chopped up small as they help it to really stick together, then the other 75g might be apricots, sultanas or any other dried fruit I have laying around.
If I use cacao powder I just add 2 tbsp of it to the dry ingredients.
100g butter/margarine (I use Pure and it works fine)
150g syrup or honey
240g porridge oats (I find small/medium best so the bind to eachother)
150g dried fruit, finely chopped.
Preheat oven to 190c.
- Put the butter/marg and the syrup/honey in a pan and heat on low until it's all melted together. Take the pan off the heat.
- Add all the dry ingredients to the pan and mux well.
- Add the mixture to the lined/greased tin and press down firmly with a spoon.
- Bake for about 20 mins. I take them out a bit early, nothing worse than burnt edges!
- Leave in the tins for 10 mins then put onto a cooling rack to cool before cutting up.
To do three batches at a time:
I have 3 bowls with the dry ingredients in: along with one measure of the oats in each, one might be a cacao and more nutty mix, one a simple date and apricot mix, and the other dark choc chips, sultana and coconut mix. Then when the honey/syrup and butter/marg (3× the recipe's quantity) have melted I split that liquid between the three bowls of dry ingredients.
I use loaf tins as you can fit more into the oven than using flat, wide brownie tins, so you end up with taller, cube-like flapjacks rather than flat wide ones.
Cut once cool, freeze (not touching eachother) on a baking tray for 24 hours then chuck them all into a bag in the freezer and you can pull one out without them being frozen to eachother.