Festive Flapjacks with Cranberries and White Chocolate Chips

Yum, these festive flapjacks will energise your Christmas week. Jam-packed with sustaining carbohydrate, they're a real treat that your pupils will love. Commercially-bought energy bars can be sweet, sickly and packed with unwanted extras; these flapjacks will take max. 25 minutes from start to finish – well worth the effort, I’d say.

Ingredients to serve 4

• 175g butter, plus extra for greasing

• 175g golden syrup

• 100g soft brown sugar

• 250g oats (50% jumbo oats and 50% standard porridge oats works best)

• 150g dried cranberries

• 100g white chocolate chips

• 1 tsp cinnamon

• zest of one orange

Method

• Preheat the oven to 170 C/gas mark 3. Grease a 20cm square tin, or an 9 x individual bar tin with a little butter.

• In a saucepan, melt the butter with the sugar and golden syrup on a low heat. When the sugar has dissolved, add the cranberries, orange zest, cinnamon, chocolate chips and oats. Mix together really well. Leave for a few minutes.

• Turn the mixture into the tin and press down with the back of a spoon or your fingers.

• Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes until golden. Remove the tin from the oven and set on a wire rack.

• Leave to cool slightly and mark into bars with a really sharp knife.

• Don't remove the flapjacks from the tin until they are cool and firm.