Cooking With Child

For the past six weeks I have been doing a cookery group through my local sure start centre with mini me,  it has been a great six weeks having a designated time to share my passion with the little one.  It lead me to the decision to carry on having a specific time to cook/bake with the wee one.  Don't get me wrong  I have always involved her in food prep, and even as young as she is tried to give her a good awareness of the ethics of food.

Some may say I'm cruel, an example being grocery shopping this week she wanted pears.  However, my local supermarket didn't have any grown in Britain so we had British grown apples instead... Yes it is mean, but who else is going to teach her.  

Oh dear... I'm getting passionate and going of topic, back to the real post.  Here is the recipe for: 

Miss Coraline's yummy sultana and cashew flapjacks.

Ingredients

80g Unsalted Butter
80g Brown Sugar
60g Golden Syrup
40g Honey
140g Porridge Oats
30g Chopped Cashew Nuts
60g Sultanas

Optional
50g milk chocolate
handful of chopped cashew nuts

1. Melt the butter in a large saucepan over a low to medium heat.
2. Stir in the sugar, golden syrup and honey and heat gently until melted
3. Remove the pan from the heat
4. Put the porridge oats, cashew nuts and sultanas in a mixing bowl and stir.
5. Add the melted syrupy butter and mix well until everything is combined
6. Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper and spoon the mixture into the tray.  Push it down with the spoon to level it and spread it out evenly
7. Bake in a preheated oven 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4 for 20 minutes.
8. Allow to cool before cutting into squares, drizzling with melted chocolate and scattering with chopped cashews.

Feel free to switch the nuts to another type or perhaps try some seeds.  Try experimenting with different dried fruit too.

This recipe is adapted from a recipe in Alive and Cooking, a cookery book from Sure Start Children's Centres and Suffolk County Council.