BBC Good Food Cherry Oat Squares with Chocolate Drizzle

Having gone far too long without a spot of baking, my need for sweet cakey goodness led to my trying a new recipe from this month's BBC Good Food magazine. The whole feature on 'Baking for a Cake Stall' was filled with the most tempting pictures of bulgingly beautiful cakes and biscuits and frankly I could have quite happily baked (and eaten for that matter) the entire lot. But the picture of a tower of squat little squares of oaty goodness tempted me above all others and I settled on the Cherry Oat Squares with Chocolate Drizzle.

In my mind, these perfectly lend themselves to the idea of food as art. Golden building blocks of cake stacked so daintily on top of one another, they resemble a delicious food version of a jenga tower. The enticing deep, dark chocolate drizzled over the top provides a stark contrast to the warm golden brown of the cake.

Essentially, these are flapjacks but having been made with self-raising flour as well and with the omission of golden syrup, they are less dense and cloying. Instead, they are lighter, crumblier with a nice soft, biscuity texture that is still firm and satisfying.

Punctuated with glace cherries, that glisten like rubies, buried in the sandy rubble of the flapjack, they provided a pleasing mix of tastes. The chewy yet crumbly flavour of oats, the sweet bursts of cherry goodness and the sophisticated depth of dark chocolate all work together to provide a wonderful taste sensation, all packed into one little, dense square.

These went down so well at work, that I didn't even get one.

Recipe:

·         140g butter, melted, plus extra butter for the tin

·         100g self-raising flour

·         175g caster sugar

·         175g porridge oats

·         1 egg, beaten

·         100g glace cherries, halved

·         50g dark chocolate

1.       Heat oven to 180C/160C fan. Butter and line the base and sides of a 22cm square cake tin, allowing it to come up over the sides to make it easier to get out.

2.       Mix together the flour, sugar and oats in a bowl. Add the egg, melted butter and cherries and mix well to combine. Tip into the tin and press down with a fork to smooth the mixture and spread it evenly.

3.       Bake for 2-25 minutes until golden brown. Cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then carefully lift out using the paper and place on a board. Mark, but don’t cut, 3 lines each way to make 16 squares.

4.       Melt the chocolate in the microwave for a minute then drizzle over the squares. When the chocolate had set, cut the squares down the marked lines.