I recently got a copy of Signe Johansen's cookbook Scandilicious Baking, and a lot of the recipes call for spelt flour. I had never used spelt flour before (it's made from an ancient variety of wheat), but I am always happy to try something new. So I bought some spelt flour and decided to try Johansen's recipe for salted caramel granola biscuits.
Ironically, the first recipe I selected from this Scandinavian cookbook isn't Scandinavian at all. The biscuits are a variation of a British flapjack, which is why the recipe is humorously labeled "Flappenjacken" -- the word the Muppet Show's Swedish Chef uses to refer to flapjacks (e.g., see this video).
Spelt isn't the only unusual ingredient in this recipe. It also calls for a mixture of "oats, spelt, rye, and barley flakes." While it wasn't difficult for me to find spelt flour, I didn't know where to get "flakes" of spelt, rye, or barley. So I stuck with what I know and I decided to go with all oats. And because the last time I made flapjacks I was unhappy with the crumbly texture I got when I used old-fashioned oats, I decided to go with quick oats this time. The recipe also calls for "vanilla sea salt" and mentions that this ingredient is "essential." Since I didn't have any vanilla sea salt (in fact, I'm not sure I've ever seen such a thing), I just used sea salt and the scraped seeds from a half of a vanilla bean.
Once I had figured out all of the ingredients, the recipe came together quickly. I heated butter, sugar, and milk on the stove until the butter melted and the sugar dissolved. Then I dumped in all of the other ingredients (an egg, spelt flour, quick oats, slivered almonds, dried coconut, golden syrup, salt, vanilla seeds, and baking powder) and stirred to combine. That was it. The batter was very wet and I poured it into a parchment-lined 7-inch by 11-inch pan; I recently bought a pan this size because it's used frequently in foreign recipes.
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After a quick bake (20 minutes), I cooled the flapjacks completely before slicing. The flapjacks had a fine texture and looked more like cake than a traditional flapjack; I was actually wondering if maybe I should have used old-fashioned oats instead to give them a more oaty texture. The bars were moist, but they crumbled around the edges in a way that made them messy to cut and eat. I really enjoyed them. These flapjacks might not seem like British flapjacks, but they do have a smooth and wonderfully prominent salted caramel flavor. I would make these again and would be interested to see how they come out with different varieties of grain flakes. But even with just oats, I thought they were -- as the Swedish Chef would say -- deleeciuoos!
Recipe: "Flappenjacken -- salted caramel granola biscuits" from Scandilicious Baking by Signe Johansen.
Previous Post: "Lost in Translation?: Banana and Chocolate Chips Flapjacks," February 1, 2013.
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