Flapjack-adjacent biscuit-type-things

I expect my consistent inability to provide clear descriptions or accurate quantities for my recipes is rather frustrating, but it's more than just laziness and bad record-keeping on my part: I genuinely believe that the best cooking is done by sight and flavour and texture (or sound: read this amazing article on that), with the ingredients you have to hand.

Today I needed something with sugar in it to help me through a very long day on very little sleep. After a quick sweep of my dwindling stocks, I made a batch of sweet oaty treats somewhere between biscuits and flapjacks. I didn't measure any of the ingredients or pay attention to how long they were in the oven (at least not in minutes - it was as long as it took me to get bored of Prime Minister's Questions and put on a load of laundry...).

I mixed roughly equal volumes of flour, sugar and margarine to about double that volume of porridge oats, until I got a mixture that was close to crumble topping but stickier. I then added runny honey, about the same volume as the margarine, a pinch of salt, a pinch of cinnamon, and a few drops of vanilla essence, and mixed until I achieved a doughy mixture that held its shape.

I spread it to about three-quarters-of-an-inch thickness onto baking paper on a baking tray, and baked at 200 degrees for about half an hour, which was a little bit too long. I then left it to cool quite thoroughly before cutting into squares: