Energy flapjack recipe

I've been experimenting a bit trying to create something that is tasty and, hopefully, healthy.  There are some delicious energy bars available for sale but they're fairly expensive so I wanted to be able to make my own alternatives.

I'm going to include some shopping links to those of the ingredients that are mixes - these are purely for information, I don't make anything out of directing you to shopping websites. It's just so you can see what the mixes consist of - you can easily replace these ingredients with different variations on the mixes, it's a fairly flexible recipe.

For my latest version I used the following:

1 banana
3 medium apples
2 small pears (the kiddies lunchbox size ones)
1tsp lemongrass paste
2 desertspoons of coconut oil (I've noticed you can buy this in Tesco now - Yay!)
2 desertspoons of lemon or lime juice (or a bit of each)
100-125g of linseed and Goji berry mix I got mine from good old Aldi :-)
75g Omega Seed mix
1 desertspoon caraway seeds
50g chia seeds
Chopped crystallized ginger
150g mixed dried fruit
100g porridge oats
Ground cinnamon - for taste and supposed to be good for stabilising blood sugar levels
Ground ginger - for taste and supposed to be good for indigestion
Sea salt

This makes a large baking sheet of flapjacks - they won't keep for much more than a week so you might want to make a smaller batch if you're not going to share them !

Firstly, I peeled, cored and chopped the apples and pears and microwaved the apples in a covered dish with a touch of lemon juice to soften them up (about three minutes), then used a hand-blender to blend them with the banana, coconut oil, lime or lemon juice and lemongrass paste to form  a liquid.  This mixture tastes divine, would be just gorgeous with some Malibu chucked in......

I put all the dry ingredients except the porridge oats into a large mixing bowl with the mixed fruit and chopped ginger. Add cinnamon and ground ginger to taste. I like to add salt for a slightly savoury edge but that's just personal taste. The caraway seeds are just for taste too so increase or decrease as you prefer. Pour in the blended fruits and mix everything together.

Grease the baking tray using coconut oil.

I then add the porridge oats a bit at a time until the mixture is a consistency that can be pressed into the baking tray with the back of a spoon, not too sticky or sloppy. The mix should stick together but not stick to the back of the spoon.

You can vary the quantities of the different seed and fruit mixes to suit your preference and then the quantity of oats can be adjusted to suit. You can also vary the mix of blended fruit depending on what you prefer or what needs using up - I mix it in a 500ml jug and have 400-450ml of liquid after blending the fruit and coconut oil.

Bake in a pre-heated oven for 20-25 minutes at about 180 celsius/350 fahrenheit/Gas mark 4 - keep an eye on it, the cooking time may vary depending on any variations you have made to the mix.  I turn the baking sheet out on to a chopping board while still hot and cut the mixture into small pieces then leave to cool.

This should be a fairly easy recipe to adapt - the chopped crystallized ginger was a bit of an indulgence. If you don't like ginger, you could replace it with dried banana chips/apple chips/pear chips etc. If you don't like dried fruits, you could replace it with chopped nuts. Or just miss it out.  I like the idea of doing a version with a citrus and chilli theme....