Flapjack is a name for two different sweet foods. In the
UKThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
and Australia, it refers to a tray-baked biscuit, and in Canada, the United States, and South Africa, it refers to a form of
pancakeA pancake is a thin, flat cake prepared from a batter and cooked on a hot griddle or frying pan. Most pancakes are quick breads; some use a yeast-raised or fermented batter. Most pancakes are cooked one side on a griddle and flipped partway through to cook the other side. A crêpe is a very thin and...
.
In Ireland and the UK, a flapjack is a baked bar biscuit, cooked in an oven tin and cut into rectangles, made from
rolled oatsRolled oats are traditionally oat groats that have been rolled into flat flakes under heavy rollers and then steamed and lightly toasted. The oat, like the other cereals, has a hard, inedible outer husk that must be removed before the grain can be eaten. After the outer husk has been removed from...
,
fatFats consist of a wide group of compounds that are generally soluble in organic solvents and largely insoluble in water. Chemically, fats are generally triesters of glycerol and fatty acids. Fats may be either solid or liquid at normal room temperature, depending on their structure and composition...
(typically
butterButter is a dairy product made by churning fresh or fermented cream or milk. It is generally used as a spread and a condiment, as well as in cooking applications such as baking, sauce making, and frying...
),
brown sugarBrown sugar is a sucrose sugar product with a distinctive brown color due to the presence of molasses. It is either an unrefined or partially refined soft sugar consisting of sugar crystals with some residual molasses content or produced by the addition of molasses to refined white sugar.Brown...
and usually
Golden syrupGolden syrup is a pale treacle. It is a thick, amber-colored form of inverted sugar syrup, made in the process of refining sugar cane juice into sugar, or by treatment of a sugar solution with acid. It is used in a variety of baking recipes and desserts. It has an appearance similar to honey, and...
or
honeyHoney is a sweet food made by some insects using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans...
.
Flapjack is a name for two different sweet foods. In the
UKThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
and Australia, it refers to a tray-baked biscuit, and in Canada, the United States, and South Africa, it refers to a form of
pancakeA pancake is a thin, flat cake prepared from a batter and cooked on a hot griddle or frying pan. Most pancakes are quick breads; some use a yeast-raised or fermented batter. Most pancakes are cooked one side on a griddle and flipped partway through to cook the other side. A crêpe is a very thin and...
.
Ireland & the United Kingdom
In Ireland and the UK, a flapjack is a baked bar biscuit, cooked in an oven tin and cut into rectangles, made from
rolled oatsRolled oats are traditionally oat groats that have been rolled into flat flakes under heavy rollers and then steamed and lightly toasted. The oat, like the other cereals, has a hard, inedible outer husk that must be removed before the grain can be eaten. After the outer husk has been removed from...
,
fatFats consist of a wide group of compounds that are generally soluble in organic solvents and largely insoluble in water. Chemically, fats are generally triesters of glycerol and fatty acids. Fats may be either solid or liquid at normal room temperature, depending on their structure and composition...
(typically
butterButter is a dairy product made by churning fresh or fermented cream or milk. It is generally used as a spread and a condiment, as well as in cooking applications such as baking, sauce making, and frying...
),
brown sugarBrown sugar is a sucrose sugar product with a distinctive brown color due to the presence of molasses. It is either an unrefined or partially refined soft sugar consisting of sugar crystals with some residual molasses content or produced by the addition of molasses to refined white sugar.Brown...
and usually
Golden syrupGolden syrup is a pale treacle. It is a thick, amber-colored form of inverted sugar syrup, made in the process of refining sugar cane juice into sugar, or by treatment of a sugar solution with acid. It is used in a variety of baking recipes and desserts. It has an appearance similar to honey, and...
or
honeyHoney is a sweet food made by some insects using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans...
. As well as being baked at home, they are widely available in shops, ready-packaged, often with extra ingredients such as
chocolateChocolate comprises a number of raw and processed foods produced from the seed of the tropical cacao tree. Cacao has been cultivated for at least three millennia in Mexico, Central and South America, with its earliest documented use around 1100 BC...
,
dried fruitDried fruit is fruit that has been dried to remove some of the fruit's moisture, either naturally or through use of a machine, such as a food dehydrator. Raisins, prunes, and dates are examples of popular dried fruits...
, nuts, yoghurt and
toffeeToffee is a confection made by boiling molasses or sugar along with butter, and occasionally flour. The mixture is heated until its temperature reaches the hard crack stage of 300 to 310 °F...
pieces or coatings, either as individual servings or full unsliced trayfuls. Flapjacks are not a cake, but many people consider them as such. They are usually an alternative to a
biscuitA biscuit is a kind of small, flat-baked bread product that is usually made with a chemical leavener such as baking powder. The exact meaning varies markedly in different parts of the world, and the meanings in British English and American English are quite distinct...
(
cookieIn the United States and Canada, a cookie is a small, flat-baked treat, containing milk, flour, eggs, and sugar, etc. In most English-speaking countries outside North America, the most common word for this is biscuit; in many regions both terms are used, while in others the two words have different...
) or
cakeCake is a form of food that is usually sweet and often baked. Cakes normally combine some kind of flour, a sweetening agent , a binding agent , fats , a...
, and textures range from soft and moist to dry and crisp. Because of the high levels of fat and calories in traditional recipes, some 'diet' versions are available with lower fat and calorie content. Similar products are known in Australia as muesli bars or simply 'a slice'.
North America
In
CanadaCanada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, and
South AfricaThe Republic of South Africa is a country located at the southern tip of Africa, with a coastline on the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. To the north lie Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, to the east are Mozambique and Swaziland, while Lesotho is an independent country surrounded by South Africa.Modern...
, a flapjack is a thin
pancakeA pancake is a thin, flat cake prepared from a batter and cooked on a hot griddle or frying pan. Most pancakes are quick breads; some use a yeast-raised or fermented batter. Most pancakes are cooked one side on a griddle and flipped partway through to cook the other side. A crêpe is a very thin and...
that is not only crispy but slightly chewy as well. A defining attribute of a flapjack is its large diameter, commonly measuring 10" (25 cm) or more. A flapjack is typically made using a corn millet-based batter as compared with pancakes, which use a flour-based batter. The two are often confused and today are nearly synonymous.
History
The
Oxford English DictionaryThe Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press , is a comprehensive dictionary of the English language...
records the word flapjack as being used as early as the beginning of the 17th century, but at this time it seems to have been a flat tart or pan-cake. Shakespeare refers to flapjack in
Pericles, Prince of TyrePericles, Prince of Tyre is a play written at least in part by William Shakespeare and included in modern editions of his collected works despite questions over its authorship, as it was not included in the First Folio. Modern editors generally agree that Shakespeare is responsible for the main...
, but this is one of the many
anachronismAn anachronism—from the Greek ανά and χρόνος —is an error in chronology, especially a chronological misplacing of persons, events, objects, or customs in regard to each other...
s in his historical plays and does not suggest that he thought it was a
middle eastern dishLebanese cuisine includes an abundance of starches, fruits, vegetables, fresh fish and seafood; animal fats are consumed sparingly. Poultry is eaten more often than red meat, and when red meat is eaten it is usually lamb on the coast and goat meat in the mountain regions...
, merely a common English dessert of the time:
- "Come, thou shant go home, and we'll have flesh for holidays, fish for fasting-days, and moreo'er puddings and flap-jacks, and thou shalt be welcome."
- Act II Scene I
Later, flapjack would be used to describe something similar to an apple flan, but it is not until 1935 that the word is first used to describe a food made of oats. While in England this usage has mostly superseded earlier recipes, in
North AmericaNorth America is the northern continent of the Americas, situated in the Earth's northern hemisphere and in the western hemisphere. It is bordered on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the east by the North Atlantic Ocean, on the southeast by the Caribbean Sea, and on the west by the North Pacific...
,
flapjack is another term for a
pancakeA pancake is a thin, flat cake prepared from a batter and cooked on a hot griddle or frying pan. Most pancakes are quick breads; some use a yeast-raised or fermented batter. Most pancakes are cooked one side on a griddle and flipped partway through to cook the other side. A crêpe is a very thin and...
, made using baking powder which causes the pancake to rise. The word elements:
flap- meaning a tossed mixture and
jack, an uncertain word suggesting a variety, imply any ingredients could be called a flapjack.
Other usage
- A flapjack can be a kind of hydraulic machine.
- A flapjack is also a derogatory term for a person from an indistinguishable country of origin.
- Flapjack is the name of the titular character in The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack
The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack is an American animated television series produced for Cartoon Network that premiered on June 5, 2008...
.
- A Flapjack is a professional wrestling throw.
- Flapjack is a card game with similar rules to Uno
Uno is a card game played with a specially printed deck . The game was originally developed in 1971 by Merle Robbins. It is now a Mattel product...
.
- In the magazine Viz
Viz. and the adverb videlicet are used as synonyms for "namely," "that is to say," and "as follows."-Background:...
the term was used as a synonym for the foreskinIn male human anatomy, the foreskin is a retractable double-layered fold of skin and mucous membrane that covers the glans penis and protects the urinary meatus when the penis is not erect...
.