Clear the Pantry Tray Bake

Disclaimer:  I am no baker - but you know when you just need something sweet and crunchy to munch with a cup of tea. If you've run out of biscuits, this might just be the recipe for you.

I don't really keep biscuits in the house, even during lockdown, mainly to stop me unnecessarily munching them and consuming unnecessary calories, but from time to time I do find myself craving something sweet and in the absence of any cake or chocolate, I've been baking this tray bake to keep our taste buds happy.

It's a very interchangeable recipe, I basically just throw in what I have in the cupboards and what I don't have I miss out.  Obviously oats, butter, sugar and flour are pretty essential, but everything else can really be substituted. It's super quick to make too and you don't need to dirty lots of pots either.

Here's the recipe:

1 cup of oats
half a cup of dessicated coconut
half a cup of plain flour
half a cup of wholemeal flour
half a cup of sugar
quarter cup of castor sugar
half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
2 tablespoons of boiling water
1 tablespoon of honey
125g of butter
2 tablespoons of chia seeds
handful of dried fruit
100g of quality chocolate for topping

Combine dry ingredients.
Melt butter and honey in saucepan on low heat.
Mix bicarb and hot water and add to butter mix, then stir well.
Add wet to dry ingredients and combine.
Add chia seeds, fruit, nuts etc. and mix.
Press into lined tin.
Cook at 180 degrees for 20 minutes
Melt chocolate and drizzle/spread over bake and smooth.

Today, for example, I didn't have coconut, either flour, bicarb or chocolate and I wanted to use up some brown sugar that I don't ordinarily use.

So, instead of the above flours I used self raising flour. I used brown sugar instead of castor and granulated, baking powder instead of bicarb and I added 1tbsp cocoa powder to the dry mix, instead of putting chocolate on the top. It's a great way to use up pantry/dry goods you don't ordinarily have a use for.

Here's how it turned out:

It tastes better than it looks and will keep us going for a few days, without having used much of anything that is essential in the cupboards. 

What have you been baking during lockdown?