Oat and Date Slices

Cat R.'s Note:

Superfood packed sweet treat copied from Asda's instore magazine. *Use the full amount (or very near to) of butter/marg. My first go at these were lovely, although I was a little alarmed at the amount of butter that pooled on the top. I mopped it up with paper towel. On the second attempt, I made a larger amount which should have taken an entire block of butter. I balked and used around 50-60g less butter than suggested, and although the result was edible, it was greatly preferred with the full amount of butter.

• Total Time: 1 hrs 5 mins
• Prep Time: 20 mins
• Cook Time: 45 mins

Ingredients:

Serves: 15

Yield: 15.0 slices

• 175 g pitted dates
• 75 g soft brown sugar
• 75 g porridge oats , rolled not instant
• 25 g sunflower seeds
• 200 g plain flour
• 175 g butter
• 2 tablespoons golden syrup

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 150C and line a baking tin with paper - don't grease it, the flapjack mixture will be greasy enough.
2. Simmer dates and 25g of the sugar with 4 tablespoons of water. The dates will become soft and the water will be absorbed. Give the dates a brisk mix with a fork to make them paste-like, if necessary add a little more water and cook for longer. I also added some allspice and cinnamon.
3. Mix oats, sugar, sunflower seeds and flour together. (I added a handful of pumpkin seeds and replaced 25g flour with oats.).
4. Melt the syrup and butter together then stir into the dry mixture.
5. Spread half the flapjack mixture in the tin, then spread all the date paste over it. Spread the remaining half of the flapjack mixture on top. Quite difficult to spread, so dot spoonfuls around and squash them out.
6. Bake for 45 minutes and allow to cool slightly before cutting into bars.