Raw honey, oat and almond flapjack bites
Image by stillmotionarts
This recipe was originally devised as a showcase for Ed’s Bees Raw Glasgow Honey, but you can make it with any first-rate, raw honey local to you. Ed’s Bees urban honey (such a cool concept) is from hives situated throughout Glasgow’s many green spaces, public and private gardens. Unheated and unpasteurised, its remarkable intensity and complexity of flavour will blow you away – totally unrecognisable from the unidimensional, bland sweetness of blended and boiled commercial honeys.
Each mouthful bursts with florals, nuanced sweetness and warm depths. Upping the marvel and intrigue, each jar is from a single hive, uniquely expressing the flowers that were in bloom around that specific hive at a specific point in time – a honey snapshot of time and place. A different time of year, a different hive, and the honey is completely different. My own jar, from the Royal Hive of Queen Mabel of Pollokshields, is a thing of buttery, caramel beauty, with soft woody undertones (rosewood comes to mind).
I’ve opted for a raw flapjack to retain:
The honey’s incredible perfume and mouth-filling flavour
Its natural enzymes (great for digestion)
The probiotic bacteria in the cultured butter (great for your gut), all of which would be cooked off with heat.
Delightful bonus: Keeping things raw provides a lovely jumble of rough-hewn, open, moist texture. Versus the hard and compact crumb of cooked flapkacks.
Bee pollen amps up the goodness and honeybee oomph factor, adding a slightly woody, pleasantly bitter catch that works well against the honey’s rounded sweetness.
The quality of ingredients and sheer intensity of flavour mean you don’t need a large portion – just one or two of these petit-four sized honey bombs is enough to satisfy, won’t mess with your blood sugar, and can even be enjoyed on a low-GI, low-carb or keto diet (yes, really! 9g net carbs a pop).
Thinking of optimising your health with your diet?
A word of caution: Stick to the amounts exactly
For me, the nobblier a flapjack the better. If I could make one with all jumbo oats I would. Sadly, standard rolled oats are needed to soak up the wet ingredients and bind everything together (too many jumbo oats > wet granola ☹️). I’ve played around with different ratios of each and the following quantities offer optimum nobbliness for cohesion. There is no margin for error – just 10g more jumbo oats instead of standard won’t set up enough to cut – so this is one recipe to stick to the amounts exactly. The whole almonds must be sliced relatively finely for the same reason – while nobbly eats beautifully, cutting becomes a bit of a ‘mare as the edges disintegrate.
What’s great about it
Contains no added sugar.
Honey is a source of natural enzymes that help with digestion.
High in fibre, from the oats and almonds.
Raw oats are rich in resistant starch, a type of starch that is resistant to digestion and acts like a fibre, slowing digestion and the release of sugars into your bloodstream, and fuelling the beneficial bacteria in your gut.
So long as you heat it gently, the cultured butter adds a bonus dose of probiotics.
How many of your ≥5-A-Day: 0 per serving
Plant points: 3.25
Tin sizes & servings
As we eat with our eyes first, our goal is a batch of the prettiest, perfectly equal, dainty squares. A square tin makes that easy peasy and is therefore the ideal option. But in case you don’t have any square tins, I’ve also given rectangular dimensions.
4-inch/10cm square tin, makes 9 petit-four sized squares
Or any rectangular tin measuring approximately 16 square inches/103 square cm.
Sweet treats should be eaten in moderation, even the healthiest ones like these. As I’m only catering for two, this is my default tin size. If you’re catering for more, just multiply up the recipe as specified below.
5-inch/13cm square tin, makes 16 petit-four sized squares
Or any rectangular tin measuring approximately 25 square inches/161 square cm.
Multiply up the quantities specified below by 1.5, i.e. add half again.
6-inch/15cm square tin, makes 25 petit-four sized squares
Or any rectangular tin measuring approximately 36 square inches/232 square cm.
Simply double up the quantities specified below.
Time
Prep: 15 minutes
Cooking: 2-3 minutes
Ingredients (makes 9 petit-four sized squares)
Wet:
50g Ed’s Bees Raw Glasgow Honey or any excellent raw honey local to you, choose a runny one so you don’t need to heat the honey to mix it
35g raw cultured grass-fed salted* butter, cubed, I recommend Bungay Raw Butter or Isigny Ste Mère’s Unpastuerised Salted Butter, in that order – see Recommended Products & Stockists below for full details (see Variations for dairy-free sub)
15g organic unrefined cacao butter, e.g. Seed Chocolate’s or Choc Chick’s organic, again in that order
Dry:
50g organic standard rolled oats** (see note under Variations)
20g organic jumbo rolled oats**
25g organic whole almonds, sliced finely
25g organic flaked almonds, toasted
10g/1 tablespoon organic bee pollen granules, plus extra to finish, e.g. Al-Ameen
*Salt accentuates sweetness and makes flavours POP. It is needed in this recipe, so if you use an unsalted butter, add it back in with 1/8th teaspoon finely ground salt.
**If you follow a gluten-free diet, opt for a brand that’s labelled gluten-free.
Method
Preheat the oven to 160C.
Place the flaked almonds on a baking tray and roast until an even light golden, checking at 6 minutes and giving 1 or 2 minutes extra if necessary. Set aside to cool.
While the almonds are cooking and cooling, line your tin and all the dry ingredients.
Line a 4-inch/10cm square baking tin with baking parchment (see above note on alternative tin sizes and amounts). Cut two lengths of parchment paper the width of the tin, looping each length up and over the side of the tin so that it’s easy to lift out the finished flapjack.
Place the whole almonds on a chopping board and slice them finely – too rough/chunky and the squares won’t cut cleanl.y.
Transfer the sliced almonds to a mixing bowl and add the rolled oats, jumbo oats, and bee pollen. Once they’re completely cool, add the flaked almonds and stir everything together until evenly combined, using a fork so as not the break the flaked almonds.
Cube the butter. If using block or shards of cacao butter rather than pistoules, chop it into pieces too. Add both to a small saucepan, place on the very lowest heat and warm until almost melted, stirring continuously. Remove from the heat and continue stirring until fully melted; the residual heat of the pan will melt the rest. Alternatively, if you have a dehydrator, place the butter and cacao butter in a small bowl, place inside the dehydrator and heat at 40C until just melted.
Important note: Cacao butter melts at body temperature (37C). Whether you melt the fats on the stove or in a dehydrator, keeping the temperature to around 40C preserves the cacao’s wonderful aromas, which are lost much above that. This is why it’s crucial to apply minimal exposure to heat if melting on the stove.
Add the honey to the melted butter and cacao butter and stir to combine. Pour the wet mixture over the dry ingredients and stir until everything is evenly combined.
Tip the mixture into the prepared tin, then press it down very firmly with the back of a metal spoon or a spatula.
Next – and this step is absolutely crucial, to both the texture and cutability – choose something with a smooth flat base, a small jar for example, I use the end of a plastic rolling pin, and pack the mixture down, pressing down as hard as you can until it’s as compact as you can get. Finally, run the jar/rolling pin/whatever implement you’re using across the mixture, going from side to side, then up and down, to create a perfectly level surface. If your smoother doesn’t have straight sides, it won’t reach the edges, in which case go back in with the spoon/spatula to even them off.
Sprinkle the surface lightly with extra bee pollen – not too much, especially if you’re not keen on bitter.
Place the tin in the fridge for 3-4 hours, preferably overnight, to allow the flapjack to set up.
Turn the flapjack out onto a chopping board, mark out the top into 9 even, petit-four sized squares, then cut along the guide lines (if using a 5-inch or 6-inch tin, cut into 16 or 25 squares respectively). For pro, super-sharp clean edges, use a sharp bread knife, running it under a very hot tap and drying it off with a clean tea towel in between each slice.
Store in the fridge where it will keep for up to one week. Or freeze.
For maximum sweetness and flavour and a crumbly, more open texture, allow the bites to come up to room temperature before serving – our taste receptors for sweet, umami and bitter work best at temperatures of 15-35°C. Check out my article, How Temperature Affects Taste for more info. Alternatively, serve cold if you prefer a firm, dense, chewy texture.
Recommended products & stockists
Bungay Raw Butter – the UK’s only raw milk cultured butter and, undoubtedly, its very best. Made by Fen Farm Dairy in Suffolk, from their own herd of grass-fed, ancient-breed (Montbeliarde) cows. Rich, fully-flavoured and complex – once you’ve tried it, all other butters pale by comparison. Totally worth the splurge. Available locally from Mellis (£4.00/200g) and online from the dairy’s shop.
Isigny Ste Mère’s Unpastuerised Salted Butter – grass-fed, cultured and unpasteurised butter from Normandy. The next best butter I’ve tried and my everyday go-to butter. Available from Waitrose and Sainsburys, £2.60/250g.
My top cacao butter recommend is Seed Chocolate’s ultra-premium Organic Unrefined Cacao Butter – made from the King of Cacao, the rare and highly coveted Criollo cacao bean. Normally reserved for the most high-end of high-end chocolates, pounce, as it’s even rarer to see Criollo cacao butter. No matter how many times I’ve done it before, each time I open the bag, I am compelled to stuff my nose in and take a deep, long draught – headily aromatic, the scent is entrancing, hypnotic even. And magnetic – one hit is never enough! Exquisite. Available direct, £4.95 for 100g.
Choc Chick’s organic cacao butter is available direct and sometimes stocked locally by Roots, Fruits & Organics on Great Western Road. Also £4.95 for 100g.
Ed’s Bees honey and Al-Ameen organic bee pollen are available locally from Roots, Fruits & Organics.
Variations
Dairy-free adaptation: This recipe is a celebration of the flavour of outstanding honey and butter. If you caneat butter, I therefore strongly urge you to try the original recipe, using the very best butter you can get your hands on. However, if butter is a dietary no-go, or just not your thing, replace it with 25g cashew butter (e.g. Biona organic), increase the cacao butter to 25g, and add 1/8th teaspoon finely ground salt. The result is exceptionally good.
If you prefer a firmer flapjack, you can increase the standard rolled oats to 60g (keeping the jumbo at 20g). Personally, I prefer 50g, for a more open-textured flapjack, greater honey intensity and lower carbs, but 60g also works.
Serving suggestions
As they are!
A great option for the kids’ packed lunch boxes now the schools are back.
Also rather lovely crumbled over COCOS natural coconut milk yoghurt or kefir with stewed apples. For breakfast or pudding.