What I Ate Today

A while ago now, whilst visiting some of the local asian shops I found a jar of Date Syrup. Being quite into Dates I decided to buy some without anything particular in mind to use it for. It’s sat at the back of our cupboards for a few months now, partly because I keep forgetting its there but also because I can’t find many recipes that use it.

I’d been promising Jenny for a while now that I’d make some peanut butter biscuits, again that’s not happened either. Today I decided to experiment and mix the two together – rather than biscuits I made flapjacks, making use of the many packets of seeds and oats we had.

Ingredients (10 bars)

• 4 oz Butter
• 1.5 oz Muscovado Sugar
• 2 tbsp Date Syrup
• 2 tbsp Peanut Butter (unsweetened is good, flapjacks are sweet enough)
• 2 tbsp Sultanas
• 5 oz Porridge Oats
• 1 tbsp Sesame Seeds
• 1 tbsp Sunflower Seeds

Method

There really was nothing to this:

• Pre-heat the oven to 180C. Cover baking tray with grease-proof paper.
• Melt the butter in a big pan.Once melted, add the sugar, syrup and peanut butter. Let it all dissolve into a smooth paste.
• Add the sultanas, oats and seeds, mix it all together.
• Layer the mixture onto the baking tray, 1/2 inch thick. Cook for 18mins.
• Let the flapjack cool for 15mins, cut into bars.

Rather than the overly rich and sticky flapjacks you’d get these turned out to have quite a wholesome, almost malty taste. They’re also slightly crumbly – perfect for having with some (ice) cream.

Some notes on Date Syrup

The Date Syrup was pretty much as you’d expect – dark, rich, sweet, syrupy. Although it’s sweet, it’s not sickly – something I could tolerate – less sweet than golden syrup. I definitely intend to use some more of the stuff, I think it works really well with nuts, I might try some sort of cake with Walnuts. It might even work with some sort of Moroccan Lamb dish.