Day 344: Room Service
After a nail-biting drive to Edmonton this afternoon, the kind of drive where it seems your car is hovering motionless over furiously blowing snow (when in fact you’re going over 100km/hr) and then blasting through an asteroid field in the Millenium Falcon, we arrived at rush hour, starving and cranky. We decided on room service rather than a run across the street to Subway because we have this lovely room with a little living room area with a (faux) fire place, we’re all together, and the hockey game was on. The food took awhile (likely on account of the several Christmas parties going on tonight) and was fine if not a little utilitarian… our “bison meatloaf burger” was not exactly that, and didn’t even come with ketchup (but with cucumber – go figure), but the Hawaiian pizza was tasty. Afterward, some friends we haven’t seen in ages came by for a visit and we ate pistachios and the Two Bite Mincemeat Tarts I grabbed at the grocery store on the way into town – my first mince of the season, and not bad I must say – I’ll spare you a photo of the carnage. Nothing remotely inspirational tonight, I’m afraid.
But here’s a blondie to compensate – a dense, chewy square with the characteristics of a brownie without the chocolate. Like a brownie’s lesser-known first cousin. Their chewiness comes from brown sugar (and because you didn’t overbake them, right?) to which I added the grated zest of an orange, some dried cranberries and chocolate chunks. Walnuts or pecans would go very well too.
Cranberry-Orange-White Chocolate Blondies
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 1/3 cups packed brown sugar (dark or golden)
grated zest of an orange
1 large egg or 2 egg whites
2 tsp. vanilla
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup white chocolate chunks or chips
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)Preheat the oven to 350F.
In a largish bowl, stir together the melted butter, brown sugar and orange zest. Add the egg and vanilla and stir until smooth.
In a small bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder and salt. Add to the sugar mixture and stir until almost combined; add the chocolate chunks, cranberries and nuts and stir just until blended. Scrape the batter into an 8″x8″ pan that has been sprayed with nonstick spray, and bake for 25-30 minutes, until the edges are barely golden and starting to pull away from the sides of the pan, but the blondies are still soft in the middle.
Makes 16 blondies.
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December 09 2008 | cookies & squares and eating out | 2 Comments »
