In which Julie makes me cereal by accident

[andrewducker]

Julie likes cereal bars/flapjacks, but finds them too sweet. So she looked up how to make them online, and has since made a few different variations on a theme.

Some of them worked very badly, because our cooker was made in the 1800s and has a barking mad oven design that has the flame under a metal plate so that the heat all comes from a massive area of extreme hotness at the bottom of the oven. This means that cakes (for example) burn on the bottom while still being uncooked on the top. Oh, and because it's so old the temperature is dodgy, so "200°" actually means "somewhere between 180° and 220°", which also makes baking tricky. God, I'm looking forward to our new kitchen so much.

Anyway, the most recent experiment just left most of the sugar out, so that it would be less sweet. Which would be the point that she found out that sugar is one of the binding agents, and what she produced wasn't so much "cereal bars" as "cereal".

Which I have thus been intermittently eating, as it's less sugary than the cereal you buy in the shops, while being tastier than most of it too.

I'm sure that when I started writing this there was a moral to the story, but I have no idea what it was. I think I'll go with "Accidental cooking is awesome. Yum."

Comments

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

Can be made without sugar! http://www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk/recipes/low-sugar-low-fat-flapjacks

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately I hate dates. However people keep telling me you don't taste them when you mix them in with things. I haven't yet been willing to sacrifice something yummy in the name of science!

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

I don't like them out f the packet but cooked like this they're yummy.

[andrewducker]

Dates are 60% sugar, and dried apricots are 36% sugar, so that's about 140g of sugar in the low-sugar flapjacks. Possibly better than normal-sugar flapjacks, but sadly still way more than I can eat. Shame, really, it looks lovely.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

My experience with Accidental Cooking -- which is considerable, ahem -- has been more that it _can_ be yummy, rather than that it _is_.

Currently, I'm certainly happy with the Duck Soup that is resulting from happening to pick up a whole roast duck (for $16) at a Chinese market and doing something in a crockpot/slow-cooker with the portions of it other than the breast and legs.

(Well... most of them -- I popped some of the skin into the microwave, on paper towels & blotting the pieces with more, to produce crispycrunchy bits that were heavenly (pace my cardiologist).) But then, Duck Soup is notoriously easy.)

Your apparent equation of "cereal bars" with "flapjacks" remains puzzling to me (so okay, I'll do a bit of Research) -- as an American, I equate "flapjacks" with "hotcakes". They, like "cereals", are a breakfast food, but very different in nature.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

'Flapjacks' are the British for 'granola bars'; a mixture of oats, butter and sugar. The sugar is in the form of the classic British condiment golden syrup, which is not commonly used in the US though, so it's a bit different.

Transatlantic cooking! It's so richly textured.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Flapjacks IME tend to be more plain (just oats + syrup or honey) than granola bars (which usually seem to contain bits of fruit).

[vereybowring.livejournal.com]

Just a thought but have you tried sucralose sweetener as an option ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucralose

Splenda is readily available in powder form at most supermarkets. It acts very much like sugar in usage but the body doesn't react to it as it would with sugar.
It's the only artificial sweetener that doesn't taste foul to me.

[andrewducker]

I completely agree. It's also the only one (so far as I can tell) that doesn't provoke an insulin response.

Even better than the packet stuff, though, is this:
http://www.ezsweetz.com/Products_product-Information.php
which is pure sucralose in liquid form. One drop is the equivalent of one tablet or one spoonful of the powdered stuff. It's amazing stuff.

[fanf]

I have been experimenting with points along the toffee-muesli axis. It goes something like toffee - flapjacks - cereal bars - granola - muesli. I think I will try toasting (some of) a muesli mix next time :-)

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

Nigella's breakfast bars (google them) are much loved in our house. They are basically fruit and nut flapjacks that use condensed milk instead of butter & golden syrup as the binding agent.

Now. Condensed milk is stuffed with sugar, but not so much as golden syrup is. So you might be ok with these as is. But people on t'internet have also made these with evaporated milk (in the belief that it's the same thing (it's not). And I believe these bind and are really pretty low sugar. Also, you can make condensed milk out of dried milk and sugar, and it's possible that you could make it out of dried milk and sucralose. Possibly.

[andrewducker]

Sounds like I have some experimenting to do!

(And thanks!)

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

Can you have fruit juice? There are cereal bars made for toddlers, which have no sugar and are sweetened with fruit juice. e.g. these (http://www.organix.com/goodies/our-foods/apple-orange) My friend Liz made some herself based on the ingredients on the pack, and they came out well.

I like the sound of your home-made cereal. I like the kind of cereal made from oat clusters and dried fruit (strawberry crisp, raisin crisp, etc), but I find it's too sweet, and would prefer it if it were just sweetened by the fruit.

[andrewducker]

I can't have much of it, because it's packed full of sugar.

I recommend the cereal-making route - it's surprisingly easy to just mix a bunch of stuff together and stick it in the oven!