This recipe scores highly on the results to kitchen time ratio!
Blondies are just the hot white chocolate cousins of normal chocolate brownies.
Firstly the white chocolate and berry splinters:
200g good quality white chocolate (get it from a baking supply store)
50g unsalted cashew nuts (chopped)
50g dried berries
- Fill a pot with boiling water (halfway), put a large enough bowl over the top of pot and add the chocolate to the bowl
- Keep stirring the chocolate while it melts until you have smooth runny chocolate
- Pour this onto a sheet of baking paper
- Distribute it evenly over the paper so that you have a layer of chocolate roughly 5mm thick
- Sprinkle the nuts and berries evenly over the chocolate and leave it to set
While the chocolate is setting, get going with the Blondies:
115g butter
400g light brown sugar
1.5 cups cake flour
1ml salt
2.5ml baking powder
100g good quality white chocolate (roughly chopped)
100g macadamia nuts (chopped)
2 eggs
5ml vanilla essence
9 tsp strawberry jam
icing sugar to decorate
- Pre-heat the oven to 160 degrees C
- Line a baking pan with baking paper and make sure the sides are also lined to the top
- Melt the butter and sugar in a pot over medium heat, the sugar doesn't need to completely dissolve
- In the mean time, sift the flour, salt and baking powder together
- Add the sugar mixture to the dried ingredients and mix well
- Next add the nuts, chocolate, eggs and vanilla and fold the whole lot into mixture
- This is supposed to be quite a dry mixture (don't expect a runny pancake batter) but I added a squirt of cream just to get the mixture to stick
- Spoon the mixture into the lined pan and add a drop of strawberry jam every couple of centimeters
- Let it bake for 55 minutes
- Once it has cooled off slightly remove it from the pan and cut it into squares
- Sift icing sugar over each piece and enjoy!
Serve with fresh cherries dipped in the remaining melted white chocolate...
*The pretty pics were taken by my wife!
