Cherry and Almond Blondies

I love brownies, they’re chocolatey and chewy and yummy! I personally love a rich super chocolatey brownie with huge chunks of chocolate and the crunchy surprise of cashews or walnuts, but I thought I’d give blondies a go!

We had some hideously unloved cherries going off in the fridge so I thought, why not add cherries to the mix?! I love cooking with almond so I was keen to add almonds too! If you don't like almonds or cherries you can substitute the cherries for any berry type fruit and leave out the almonds if you're not as into nuts as me.

My blondie - not too pretty, but was definitely yummy!

Ingredients

100g fresh cherries (weighed with stones but halve them removing stalks and stones to prepare for baking)

150g chocolate chopped into chunks (of your choice but you need at least 50g of white chocolate to ensure your blondie is blonde... I used 100g Lindt Lindor and 50g Galaxy Caramel)

1 drop almond essence (or vanilla if you’re not as keen on almond as I am)

25g flaked almonds (or other nuts of your choice – but also works without the nuts if you’re not a fan)

200g plain flour

300g sugar

200g butter (I used salted – but add your own salt to the mix if you want to use unsalted butter)

3 eggs

Method

1 – preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180C and grease a large square baking tin

2 – gently heat the butter in a pan until it looks slightly golden and begins to smell sweet, leave to cool for 5 minutes

3 – while the butter cools beat the sugar and eggs together with a whisk until it becomes pale and thick

4 – add 50g of the white chocolate to the butter and stir it in as it melts

5 – to the egg and sugar mix gently fold in the flour, almond essence and butter chocolate mix and stir until combined

6 – add the chocolate chunks and half the cherries to the mix and pour into your prepared baking tin

7 – scatter the rest of the cherries on top of the mix  and bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes

8 – when it is golden (and I mean quite a dark golden) on top, remove from oven and leave to cool, when cool cut into squares and enjoy (possibly with a cup of coffee?)  

Let me know if you give these a try and what you think!

Vicki xxx

Aussie treats!

I have an amazing friend who lives in Australia (hope you're reading this Alissa!), she sends me things and that makes me happy!

This is not my friend, this is a koala
Photograph by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0

Most of the things she sends me are edible, which is brilliant!

Arriving home yesterday an exciting package awaited me!
On opening it I was not disappointed, inside there were (alongside some other goodies):
- a Cadbury's Caramello bar
- Cadbury's Dairy Milk counters (this is what I have called them)
- Allen's Retro Party Mix
- Rainbow Nerds (these are a firm favourite - and yes I know we can get them here but the ones in our shops are imported from America)

There is no picture of the Caramello bar because I ate it last night! It is basically the same as the Cadbury's Dairy Milk Caramel bars we have in the UK but also very different! First of all, it turns out that Australian chocolate is a lot sweeter than British chocolate, something I'm not personally used to, the sugar hits the back of your throat! But you get used to it and it is a tasty treat. The caramel is much thinner and less chewy than the UK version, similar to the Galaxy Caramel or the caramel chocolates you get in a box of chocolates. The caramello bar (bit of a cheesey name) is a grower, I wasn't sure to begin with but I liked it in the end, but I think I do prefer the UK version. Not just because that's what I'm used to but I really do love my caramel bars and the UK version is just better (Alissa I will send you a caramel bar!).

My sweets (Australians call them lollies) and other goodies [excluding Caramello bar]

The counters are really different, if it wasn't for the packet (which is almost the same as the UK Dairy Milk chocos packet) I wouldn't believe they were Cadbury's! I thought they were much sweeter and almost tasted like a Yorkie bar. I haven't tried much foreign chocolate before (except of course Belgian and German chocolates) and it's nice to try something different. I know that in Australia they use something to keep the chocolate solid and this may change the taste!

Nerds are one of mine, my brother's and even my boyfriend's favourite sweets, I'm surprisingly popular when I have Nerds. This packet is huge, I haven't seen one so big in this country! They are sweet, tangy, tiny treats which are incredibly morish! I'm worried to open it, because they will all go within about a day!

I've never heard of the brand "Allen's" (I thought it said aliens when I first saw it!) but on inspection I have found that they are part of the Nestle family (but were probably taken over in a similar way to Roundtrees in this country). The packet contains a mix of "lollies" presented by a man with an afro called "Retro Fro" it includes a mix of different shapes from milk bottles to racing cars. Let me tell you though, these are not like Haribo, they are much chewier and the taste is very different, maybe more like midget gems in the case of most of the sweets but the milk bottles taste exactly the same! I'm not a big jelly sweet eater, but that's good because it means these sweets will last me ages!

I love my friend sending me sweets, it's interesting and yummy! I hope you all enjoyed reading my opinion on these sweets. Let me know what you think about them if you've tried them!

Vicki xx