Blondie Explosion

I like to bake and make and all kinds of different things but baking is something that soothes my soul.

Anyway I make blondies, courtesy of The Hummingbird recipe book

Ingredients

150g white chocolate, roughly chopped

125g unsalted butter

150g caster sugar

2 eggs

1 (1/2) teaspoons of vanilla extract

a pinch of salt ( i think this is optional and personally don't bother, never had any complaints either)

120g shelled pecan nuts, chopped

33*23*5cm baking tray, lined with grease proof paper

Method

1.Pre-heat the oven to 170 dg C (325 dg F) Gas 3

2.Put the chocolate and butter into a bowl and sit over a pan of simmering water. DO NOT let the bowl and the water connect. It will be ruined and you might as well give up now and start again! Leave until melted and smooth.

3. Remove from heat

4. Add the sugar and stir until well incorporated

5. Add the eggs and vanilla extract, stirring briskly if the mixture looks like its starting to split. (Personally I always get a hand blender involved at this stage. I have never been able to avoid the splitting but when you do make sure that you wear an apron melted butter will splat everywhere!)

6. Add the flour, salt and pecan nuts and stir until well incorporated.

7. Add the magic- this is where I add my own ingredients to make it my own, dried, sweetened cranberries (200g) are delicious and the specs of red look pretty good too. Other dried fruit will probably go quite well with white chocolate I've yet to try blueberries but there are on my list of experiments to try!

8. Spoon the mixture into the prepared baking tray and bake in the preheated oven for about 35-40 minutes, or until golden brown and the centre is soft.

9. Leave to cool completely. Instruct your family to leave the home for the next couple of hours, grab a bottle of nice wine and a movie and most importantly

10. ENJOY

Husband likes them too and has commissioned me on occasion to make them for his team. On this particular occasion however I was busy playing catch up with work and providing support on a consultancy basis. 

Husband and I differ in our approach. I am, I believe, a much tidier baker than he is.

You'll notice that the pecan nuts need to be chopped in the recipe above. Husband came through with his nuts in a bag. I should probably explain that his approach to baking is very much that a recipe is for guideline purposes where as I like to stick to the recipe to get the best result.

Clearly he is more creative than I am when it comes to baking and cooking.

I could tell where he was going with this. By smashing the bag off of our cheap Ikea coffee table he was hoping that this would be a quick and effective route to the chopping exercise. 

I let him hit the table once, hard. As he raised the bag to strike it a second time I opened my mouth to warm him that it probably wasn't a good idea when this happened:

Leaving us with a living room that looked like this:

While I find baking therapeutic Husband finds it frustrating, especially after showering both of us in Pecans. 

When I asked if he was going to clean the mess up. He quickly said "No- have too much to do" and went back into the kitchen leaving me to clean it up.

I think he hopes that in making a huge mess and leaving me to clean it up that I will do less consultancy and be more hands on. 

I can only laugh. 

In fact I nearly cried when re-reading it to Husband.