I’ve always loved blondies but they’re not necessarily not something you see in most bakery stalls because it is more often overlookby it’s more popular cousin, the chocolate brownie.
This is my recipe for these gorgeous morsels.
Ingredients:
- 225g good white chocolate, chopped
- 125g butter, cubed
- 4 large eggs
- 300g caster sugar
- 2 tsp vanila
- 160g plain flour
- 150g ground almonds
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 170ºC.
- In a heatproof bowl place the cubed butter, and the chopped white chocolate. Place the bowl over slow boiling water, making sure that the water doesn’t touch the bottom of your bowl. Allow the butter and chocolate to melt slowly, stirring it occasionally. Once in a while, lift your bowl off the heat, rest on a towel and stir to help the chocolate to melt along with the butter. This stops the butter-white chocolate mixture from getting too hot and the mixture won’t become grainy. Once the white chocolate has completely melted, left the bowl from the heat and set aside to cool slightly.
- While the butter-white chocolate mixture is cooling, measure out the ground almonds and flour and mix with a balloon whisk to make sure they are well-combined. Set aside.
- Beat the eggs and sugar until smooth, thick, moussey and a very pale yellow colour . I use a free standing mixer and this usually takes about 10 minutes on medium speed. It will take about 15-20 minutes if you’re doing this by hand (depending on your forearm muscle strength and endurance!). Add the vanilla and mix for a few seconds to make sure the vanilla is completely incorporated.
- Add your almond-flour mixture in three parts, each time making sure everything is mixed thoroughly before adding more of the dry ingredients.
- Pour the batter into a tray bake tin foil or a rectangular pan (about 20×30 cm) that has been greased and lined with baking parchment. Bake for 35-40 minutes in the preheated oven (this varies because of how hot your oven can actually get), until the top becomes firm and shiny and when tested and a toothpick or skewer is inserted in the centre of the bake and comes out clean (sometimes with a few sticky crumbs sticking to it). Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes (about 5 minutes during a cold winter!). Once cool, gently lift from the pan and place on a cooling rack and allow the bake to get cold.
- Depending on how greedy you are, you can slice this into 18 to 24 squares.
Variations to flavours:
- Raspberry and rose blondies – instead of the vanilla, add 3 tablespoons of rosewater to the eggs and sugar mixture (step 4). Wash your raspberries and dry thoroughly and roll them in flour. The number of raspberries you add will be equal to how many blondie slices you want, i.e. for 24 slices, you add 24, etc. Add 50g more of flour to your almond-flour mixture because the more fruit you want, the wetter the bake. Bake for an extra 10 minutes, making sure you cover the top with foil when it browns too quickly.
- Cardamom blondies – add 3 teaspoons of ground cardamom to the flour and almond mixture (step 3), instead of adding vanilla.
Let me know how you get on with the recipe or suggested variations and leave a comment please!
Yellywelly 