Oats are often used in healthy breakfast and snack-time recipes full of wholesome ingredients that you can feel good about. People see a baked good made out of a oats and think "this is probably good for me".
That's precisely what I thought when I was in England and saw an pile of oat squares for sale at a train station. My first tip that these bars were not necessarily meant for breakfast should have been that they were being sold along side chocolate bars and candy, but I was momentarily confused by the name on the wrapper so I wasn't focusing on the obvious "these are not good for you" clues. The oat squares were called 'Flapjacks" which is what we Canadians call pancakes.
(it gets more confusing, the pancakes in England were what we Canadians would call crepes so there was no good way to describe the stack-o-flapjacks I was picturing in my mind).
Anyways, it only took one bite - one delicious delicious bite - to realize that these sweet, buttery, oaty bars were obviously a treat, not a health food item.
And why shouldn't oats be the star of a dessert bar? They have so much more flavor than flour, a soft chewy texture, and when baked with brown sugar and butter they show us that maybe they have been waiting all this time to be turned into a decadent treat. These tasty morsels deserve a place alongside our rice krispie squares and lemon bars.







