The house is getting there. I got another room mostly painted. Twice a day I go to the house to work towards completing something. The hope is to be close to done by the end of the month. We’ll see. Depends on how much I can get done.

Since I am so busy I chose a dead simple recipe. There are just five ingredients. It’s a British recipe for Flapjack Bars. When I first saw “flapjack”, being the American than I am, I thought of a pancake. But that was not what the picture showed. These are oatmeal bars. They are very similar to granola bars. I am starting with a recipe from Love Food. One of the things I am going to do is simplify the recipe a bit. You’re probably thinking how a recipe with only five ingredients can be simplified. If you are an American, jumbo oats and porridge oats don’t mean anything to you. If you are not from the US and these are available to you as labeled, use the oats they call for. I am going to use rolled oats (also labeled as old-fashioned). When I looked up what jumbo and porridge oats were, rolled oats seemed to be the closest to them. I am also using a honey substitute to lower the sugar and calories in place of the golden syrup. While this recipe is simple, it should be awesome.

Here are the original stats:

Here’s what I changed:

• I replaced the golden syrup with a sugar free honey substitute to reduce the carbs.
• I replaced the brown sugar with its sweetener equivalent to reduce the carbs.
• I replaced the butter with unsweetened applesauce to reduce the saturated fat and calories.
• I increased the servings from 10-12 to reduce the calories.

Here are the final stats:

Here is the final recipe:

Lower Carb Flapjack Bars

Makes 12 bars

• 10.6 oz unsweetened applesauce
• 3.5 oz sugar free syrup
• 10.6 oz brown sugar substitute
• 16 oz old fashioned oats

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Heat applesauce over low heat in a large pan. Grease a 8 x 8 pan with cooking spray.
2. Add the syrup and brown sugar and stir until thoroughly mixed in, keeping the pan over a very low heat.
3. Next, remove the pan from the heat and stir in the oats a little at a time.
4. Stir all the oats in, making sure that they’re all really well covered with the syrup, applesauce and sweetener blend.
5. Tip the mixture out into the greased baking tin, and pack it down hard with the back of a wooden spoon.
6. Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes, then raise the temperature to 400°F and bake for another 5-10 minutes. The flapjacks should now be a fair amount darker on top, but not burned, and the mixture will be quite gooey. Remove the pan from the oven, and score lines with a sharp knife to mark out your squares.
7. Leave the pan on a heatproof surface to cool for about 10-15 minutes, then cut your squares properly and place on a wire rack to fully cool.