Squidgy banana blondies

Reading this month’s Sainsbury’s Mag, I came across a massive feature on some of Dan Lepard’s amazing looking cakes with enormous glossy pictures of the most tempting array of goodies I’ve seen in quite a while.

The squidgy banana blondies looked particularly wanton, and as I had a few manky bananas knocking about I decided these had to be my weekend bake. I’ve made plenty of brownies in my time, but never knocked out a blondie so I was quite excited.

There’s a moderate level of faff involved with the recipe – you have to make a brazil nut toffee to bash up and fold through the brownie mix. But I love doing stuff like this on a Friday night when the kids have gone to bed, so I was happy as larry tinkering in the kitchen with hot sugar and chopped nuts.

The recipe is billed as lower fat – but I’m not really buying this…

But who wants to eat low fat cake anyway? Pah!

I made a few tweaks to Dan’s recipe. I had some leftover toasted coconut from a recipe I’d made earlier in the day which I thought would lend itself well to the white chocolate, banana and nut toffee combination.

I also used less white chocolate and a tad more butter. I’m not a huge fan of white choc so didn’t want it to overpower the blondies.

The finished result was splendid. I think I may have cooked them slightly too long as they weren’t as squidgy as they could have been, but they’re still soft oozing with sweetness and crunch.

They proved popular with the boys, funnily enough. They are super morish and made a VERY naughty weekend breakfast with a cup of tea.

I quickly squirrelled away half of the batch to take to a friends’ house as a gift for letting us stay for the night – have to soften the blow somehow of our noisy tribe.

Squidgy banana blondies  (Dan Lepard)

Makes 16-20
Prep time 15 mins
Cook time 35 mins

INGREDIENTS
300g caster sugar
75g brazil nuts, roughly chopped
oil for greasing
100g unsalted butter, cubed
200g white chocolate, broken into pieces
1 medium egg
2 ripe bananas, peeled and chopped
2 tsp vanilla extract
225g plain flour
1/4 tsp baking powder

1. Make the brazil nut toffee. Put 75g of the caster sugar in a small pan with 2 tbsp cold water and bring to the boil, swirling the pan until the sugar dissolves. Let it bubble away for about 2 minutes until the sugar turns to a reddish-golden caramel.

2. Stir in the chopped nuts, then turn out onto a baking sheet lined with greaseproof paper and let it cool completely.

3. Heat oven to 190C/170C fan/gas 5. Chop the toffee up into small chunks. Line the base and sides of a 20cm square tin with greaseproof paper sprayed with oil. Heat the butter in a pan with the white chocolate over a low heat until completely melted, then scrape into a bowl with the remaining sugar, egg, banana and vanilla. Stir with a wooden spoon until smooth.

4. Sift the flour and baking powder into the bowl and fold in with the chopped nut toffee (and coconut if using – see tip below). Spoon into the prepared cake tin and bake for 30-35 minutes until ‘wobbly’ set and golden on top. Leave until completely cool in tin before slicing.

Tip: I used 50g less white chocolate, 50g more butter and about 50g of desiccated coconut with a little less flour.