‘Healthy’ Almond, Cherry and Dark Chocolate Flapjacks

After my recent attempts at some slightly more complicated recipes, I decided this week I would give myself a little bit of respite and revisit my absolute go-to, traybakes. However, unlike with my honeycomb and chocolate cheesecake, I thought I would make some attempts to stick with the healthier theme.

Traybakes are quite possibly one of the easiest things to make as it’s quite difficult to go horrendously wrong. Therefore I was fairly confident in my ability to adapt a recipe for peanut butter chocolate chip bars by primavera kitchen. The recipe looked delicious and avoided adding the extra golden syrup and standard unsalted butter that many basic flapjack recipes use. And, besides, I was pretty sick of making macarons by this point, so anything would have been a welcome change.

The changes I made were fairly minor: I swapped the peanut butter for almond butter (which, much to the delight of my lazy side, can now be bought in Tesco), changed the flour for spelt flour and added in some cherries. Overall the result was pretty delicious (if I do say so myself) and I sincerely regret only making a small batch. I have also come to the realisation that it is world vegan day, and while I have too little will power to follow the diet myself, this recipe can be easily adapted by simply sticking with the coconut milk originally suggested in the recipe, using vegan chocolate, and replacing the sugar with a reasonable amount of maple syrup and oats to compensate for the stickiness. But, whatever you decide to do with the recipe, either way I hope you enjoy!

‘Healthy’ Almond, Cherry and Dark Chocolate Flapjacks (makes approx. 12 small flapjacks)

• 50g light brown soft sugar
• 125g almond butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 60ml milk
• 60g oats
• ½ cup spelt flour
• 40g 85% dark chocolate
• A handful of fresh cherries, stoned and chopped

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 180C/ 160C Fan.
2. Mix together the almond butter and the sugar in a bowl until smooth, then stir in the vanilla extract and the milk.
3. Add the oats and the flour and continue to mix until all the ingredients are evenly combined. You may need to add more oats or milk depending on the consistency: you need it to be moist but not too sticky.
4. Chop the dark chocolate into small chunks and add to the rest of the ingredients with the cherries. Stir until all the chunks are distributed across the mix.
5. Push the mix into a lined baking tray and bake for around 18 minutes.
6. Remove from the oven and leave to cool before cutting.