RECIPE: White chocolate and raspberry blondies

White chocolate and raspberry blondie of yumness

Whenever my parents come to visit me in Bristol, I take them to a delightful West Country café chain called Boston Tea Party (oh all right... I make them take me. Potato, potahto.) which is dotted all over the city. They have all sorts of yummy cakes on offer, but one of the best things I've had is their white chocolate and raspberry blondies. Oh, for anyone who hasn't come across the term "blondie" in the cake world, I'm talking about brownies made with white chocolate. It isn't a derogatory term for blonde people, no need to get all worked up and write me an angry comment.

For some reason we seemed to have an awful lot of white chocolate in the house the other day, so, naturally, I decided this was the prime opportunity to make my own version of BTP's scrummy blondies. And these really are divine, I'm not going to lie to you. You may have realised that I eat a fair amount of cake, but these really is one of my top recipes. When making brownies or blondies, it's so easy for them to turn out like cake, which is all very nice but quite frankly, disappointing if you wanted to make brownies/blondies. It doesn't make me angry. Just disappointed. This recipe, my friends, will not fail you. Squidgey (but not underdone) in the middle, more cakey at the edges with a crisp top, they are just the texture I look for in a blondie/brownie. And raspberry and white chocolate is a classic flavour combo that is hard to beat. (If you're a fan, you may like my white chocolate and raspberry Victoria sponge cake!)

It makes a pretty large quantity - 24 chunky blondies by my slicing. And they went down a treat with both my friends and family. And myself. Obvs.

Ingredients

300g butter
240g white chocolate chunks
450g light brown muscovado sugar
5 eggs, at room temperature
300g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
175g raspberries

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease and line a roughly 25x32cm rectangular traybake tin.

2. Melt the butter and 120g of the white chocolate gently in a bowl over a pan of simmering water, making sure the bowl doesn't actually touch the water, and stirring regularly to make sure it's all melted and mixed together. Leave to cool for a few minutes.

3. Measure out the sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder and vanilla extract into a large bowl. Add the melted butter and chocolate and mix thoroughly. This may take a while to come together, but keep going (a folding action works well) until it's all smooth and well-combined. Pour into the baking tray.

pre-baking

4. Scatter the raspberries and a further 60g of the white chocolate chips on top (they will sink down while in the oven). Bake in the oven for about 45 minutes until a skewer inserted into the middle of the blondie comes out nearly clean, but don't worry if not completely, as it will firm up a bit more while cooling (and everyone loves a gooey blondie/brownie!) If it starts getting a bit too brown on top while in the oven, quickly cover with foil for the rest of the baking time.

5. Leave the blondie to cool in the tin for about ten minutes, then lift it out of the tin by the baking paper and leave to cool completely on a wire rack. When completely cool, melt the remaining 60g of white chocolate and drizzle on top. Leave to set then cut into pieces. Then eat them all before anyone else can. Mwah ha ha!*

*Just me?