I’ve recently discovered the joy of flapjacks, and really want to make my own - the stuff in the store has too much grease and not enough fruits and nuts.
Problem 1: I have no idea what to use for a basic recipe. There are a million recipes out there on the internets, which is confusing. So I turn to you in hope for a good basic recipe that’s reasonably healthy (reasonably, not substitute-all-fat-and-sugar-with-bark healthy).
Problem 2: I don’t own a regular oven, just a microwave oven (and no fancy grill function). Is it possible to make flapjacks in a microwave?
ETA: And a question… what’s the difference between a flapjack and a granola bar?
I am completely baffled by this. A flapjack is made on the stove in a frying pan, out of a simple batter (mix in whatever else you want.) It bears absolutely no resemblance to a granola bar and I don’t see how you could easily make one in a microwave.
Maybe it’s a stupid question to you, but neither flapjacks nor granola bars are a tradition where I’m from (Sweden) and I have no idea how it works. Hence the questions, in a forum where you can normally get answers without feeling like an idiot. Please leave the snark outside.
I don’t see how friedo was being snarky, because this really is a totally bizarre question to an American or Canadian. A flapjack in North America is like a pancake or crepe, and is in no way like a granola bar. In Europe, a flapjack is apparently a bar cookie, made out of oatmeal, dried fruit, and the like, and held together with syrup. You’re going to get more confused people, so I suggest you contact a moderator and ask for them to edit the thread title to clarify what you’re asking.
There’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to make the bars in the microwave, but I have no idea how you’d go about it. You can’t make pancakes in the microwave, though.
Sorry, Grammanaut, I didn’t intend to be snarky. I was not aware that in Europe a flapjack is a completely different thing than what I know, which is what led to my bafflement.
I found a recipe for what the Brits call flapjack; here it is. it’s very simple, consisting of oatmeal (rolled oats), brown sugar, butter and salt. The assembly and baking insructions seem quite similar to American granola bar recipes, but the Yanks seem to want to make them a bit more elaborate (see here and here, for instance).
An interesting point to note: the OP expresses a desire for more fruit and nuts, this spec is met with the granola bar recipes, but not with the flapjack recipe. Unfortunately for our Swedish friend, the Granola bar recipes pretty much all call for baking in a bona fide direct heat oven. I suspect a toaster oven would do in a pinch, but a microwave is not going to be able to handle the job. One “granola bar” recipe that doesn’t call for an oven, doesn’t need a microwave, either. And it doesn’t strike me as being so very much like a granola bar, but for what it’s worth, here it is.
By the way, “craisins”, in case you haven’t heard of them (in the second granola bar recipe), are like raisins, but they are made with dried cranberries, rather than dried grapes.
There are a number of different types of food I would caution you against microwaving, I believe the scientific term I’m looking for is “kablooey foods”. Flapjacks (American style) come under this category.
If you try to microwave them they will eventually go kablooey.
Thanks everyone for the help, and sorry for being prickly, friedo. Like you, I had absolutely no idea a flapjack could possibly be anything else than what I was already familiar with. Also, googling “flapjack recipe” didn’t turn up any of those pancake-like things - the Wikipedia entry supplied here is the first place I’ve seen it. I’ll have to try that too of course.
Kaylasdad99 - As for the fruit and nut bit: you can get just about anything stuffed into a flapjack here and in the UK, some of them nearly contain more fruits, nuts and other things than they do oats. I guess we should simply assume your granola bars are our flapjacks.
Off I go to try stuff out. We’ll see how much goes kablooey.
Flapjacks have ingredients similar to those used in making granola bars (which are called muesli bars in the UK), but are softer and chewier and very dense. I’ve never made them either in or out of a microwave though.
I wouldn’t even describe it as “pancake-like”… at least in common usage, in the US it’s a synonym for pancake.
It’s so weird when the exact same strange [i.e. nongeneric and therefore more likely to not crop up in two different places on its own] term refers to totally different things in different countries. Another example: “fanny”
Also, googling “flapjack recipe” didn’t turn up any of those pancake-like things - the Wikipedia entry supplied here is the first place I’ve seen it. I’ll have to try that too of course.