Hey folks,
I’ve been off work for the past couple of weeks. Nothing to panic about – just needed a little personal space for a bit. Also decided to use the time to visit a friend of mine in Peterborough. As always, I felt that as my friend was nice enough to put me up for a couple of days, the least I could do in return was bake some goodies for the occasion. Now that I had a little extra time, I decided to try a recipe I’ve been to do for a long while now – blondies.
A blondie is essentially a white chocolate version of a brownie and as regular viewers will know, I’m rather fond of brownies in all their various forms. Their mix of dense flavour and potential for modifications with cherries, nuts, alcohol makes them extremely versatile. Would blondies measure up to the same standard?
“And cue the music….”
Even if you can’t quite make it out in the picture, I think you can probably guess which artist I was listening to while I made these. I don’t usually listen to music while I bake as I find it a little distracting but in this case, I found it relaxing. Anyways, you’re all here for baking goodness, rather than listening to me witter on about music, so lets get started. Although I followed this recipe from one of my books, there’s an exact duplicate online if you feel like taking a crack at these yourself:
https://www.ocado.com/webshop/recipe/white-chocolate-and-macadamia-nut-blondies/1000606
You three do realise that each time you take over the bowl, I have to spend ten minutes cleaning the fur out of it?
I’ve always been a little wary of working with white chocolate – it probably stems from attempting to make those white chocolate truffles back in Entry 2. White chocolate has a very different melting temperature to normal chocolate and it is also considerably sweeter. All I could hope was that whoever had written up this recipe had taken both of these things into account.
“I’m guessing the lack of ordinary chocolate doesn’t make this any healthier.”
The recipe called for the white chocolate and butter to be melted and I think this was the first mistake. Most cake and brownie recipes often ask for butter to be softened in order to make it easier to whisk together with sugar and so on. Melting it completely felt very odd. Maybe once the white chocolate was melted with it, it might seem a little more workable…
The Great White Chocolate Heist of 2015 was foiled after the thieves couldn’t agree on an escape route.
Once I’d rescued the chocolate, I tipped it in to the molten butter and after a few minutes, added the sugar as well. While the mixture was largely coming together, I could see a small amount of the liquid butter in the bottom of the mixing bowl. This was starting to feel very wrong.
“”Something tells me we won’t spending the night in Rapture….”
Even adding the eggs and flour didn’t seem to do much to improve matters. The mixture was certainly a lot thicker now and closer to the more familiar cake and brownie batters. Possibly even a little *too* thick:
“The mixture is fine. I’m making the spoon stay upright through marsupial telekinesis.”
Well, it was too late to change anything by this point, so the blondie mixture went into the oven for about 20 minutes on Gas Mark 6. I took it out and for a moment I thought my worries had been completely unwarranted – the top was a golden brown colour and the blondies seemed firm to the touch:
“Appearances can be misleading though…”
The blondies were horrendously underdone in the centre but if I had left them any longer in there, the top would have been burnt. I did try one of the pieces that seemed relatively baked – it was awful. The sheer sweetness of it overruled everything else save from a slight sickliness from the white chocolate flavour. I don’t know if it was down to a mistake in the recipe or a mistake I’d made somewhere but either way the blondies were a disaster. If I were to try them again, I think I’d want a different recipe to follow. -.-
Although the baking section was a complete screw up, it was wonderful to see Lauren and Kevin over the weekend and lots of fun and games were had:
“I’m a dungeon boss!”
I hope to see both of them again soon – hopefully with a much better cake next time!
****
One other very brief snippet – as many of you know, I am very keen supporter of my LGBT friends and last Tuesday was Transgender Visibility Day. In honour of the occasion, the Koala decided to make some coconut ice in the colours of the trans pride flag:
“Much like my friends, these were wonderfully sweet!”
There’s also a little good news for my ever patient readers – the next entry with all of its various photos has already been done, so you shouldn’t have to wait so long for the next entry.
Koala In The Kitchen 