Saturday 26 September 2015

The name's Blond - Caramel Blond {Salted Caramel Chocolate Blondies}

Why am I attempting silly Bond-jokes and (seemingly) infatuated with light hair colour? I don't mean blond(e) in the hair sense, but in the confection sense. In case you haven't encountered it before, blondie is a dense slice similar to brownie except without cocoa and instead with a vanilla or butterscotch flavour. 


Yeah, I've obviously been trying hard to think of a clever story about this recipe, but I don't have much to work with... However it is my own recipe, so I do feel clever about that, having combined and refined my fave choc brownie recipe (Whittakers) plus Donna Hay's salted caramel and choc brownie (which really seems like a blondie to me).



I wanted the denseness of choc brownie along with the sweet-and-salty flavour of the caramel brownie. Did I succeed? My workmates were certainly very complimentary when I brought some to work for a farewell morning tea. But I'll let you decide... hopefully you'll be pleasantly surprised!



Salted Caramel Chocolate Blondies

250g butter (regular is fine - if you have butter salted with sea salt that's perfect, but I rarely do!)
3/4 cup caramel (I buy canned caramel as I'm hopeless at making it, but if you prefer to make it yourself then I won't stop you...)
2 cups brown sugar, packed
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla essence
1 & 1/2 cups plain flour
1/4 tsp baking powder (if you want a slightly more cakey and less dense blondie)
1 block of chocolate with caramel filling (e.g. Cadbury's Caramello, Whittaker's Milk Chocolate Caramel)
sea salt to top it off

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees C (160 degrees fan bake). Line a 7" x 11" (approx) tin with baking paper. Here's an easy way to do this: cut a rectangle of baking paper wider than the tin... 


Push the paper into the corners of the tray. 



Take out the paper and cut from its corners to the indented corners on diagonals. 


Fit the paper back into the tray and bend the corner flaps so they overlap and fit the corners. You can spray a bit of oil into the tray before lining to help keep the baking paper in place.



For the blondie, place the butter, caramel and brown sugar in saucepan over a moderate heat. 

Only the best butter in the world.

Stir the mixture occasionally until all the butter has melted then remove from the heat.



Sift the flour and baking powder (if using) into a bowl. Crack the eggs into a separate small bowl or jug. Add the flour and eggs to the sugary butter mixture alternately, ending with the flour, and mix using a whisk or spatula.


Pour the batter into your lined tin. Chop up the block of chocolate and space the pieces across the batter, pushing them down gently. Sprinkle sea salt across the top of the batter.

Ideally you will have more self-control and more caramel chocolate to use... :-|

Bake for 30 mins then test the cookedness of the blondie with a skewer - if it comes out with liquid still on it then check 10 minutes later. For a dense, fudgey blondie you will want to see moist crumbs on your skewer. 

Personally I prefer to let blondie cool - and even refrigerate overnight - before digging in to ensure that fudgey texture, but this would be nice served warm for dessert also!



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