More Experimental Baking - 'Banana Nut Blondies'

This week I decided to try another shot at baking for the office. However, I wasn't in the mood for white chocolate so no 'Dreamies' this week. Instead I thought I'd give Blondies a go. Seems to be that once you've got the recipe down you can make similar Brownie type things really easily. Naturally I wanted to put a TEZ twist on them so I pondered on what to use as a special ingredient. Well I had slipped and fallen when aiming for my chair that week (lol...) That's when I thought of banana!

So the idea was a take on Banana Nut Muffins except I would add dried banana as a filling with a fresh banana mashed into the mix. Then I bought some Chopped hazelnuts and couldn't resist getting milk chocolate chips to chuck in there too. In the end they were really easy to make. I used a standard Blondie recipe (basically the same as for Dreamies minus the chocolate) and just changed/added ingredients to make the recipe mine.

They didn't turn out bad! They took a bit longer to cook though without chocolate mixed in to the batter. With my recipe they came out with a pretty heavy consistency but after trying one I decided that was a good thing because it filled me up a lot more than a regular brownie etc, which meant I wasn't going back for more right away! So... Fancy whipping up a bunch of your very own?

TEZ original recipe - 'Banana Nut Blondies'

(Please note I didn't want to shell out for cooking measuring equipment so these were guesstimates lol. However, I have included some quick tips in brackets)

Ingredients

200g butter (get a block of 500 and aim under the halfway point)
200g caster sugar (comes in 500g packs so not too diffcult to work it out)
2x teaspoons/1x dessert spoon of Vanilla extract
2x eggs
200g plain flour (again it comes in 500g packs)

1x banana

100g chopped hazelnuts

100g chopped dried banana

200g milk chocolate chips (2x 100g bags of Silverspoon brand were handy)

Directions

Grease the pan with butter. Chop the butter block into smaller bits and microwave in 20 second intervals. Add the sugar and mix thoroughly. Now add the vanilla extract. Allow time for it to cool down from the previous microwaving so that when you now add the eggs one at a time, they don't cook. Mash the banana in. Use a wooden spoon at this point not a fork. The mix is going to start to get pretty thick so you'll need the extra leverage. Add your hazelnuts and dried banana chips. Stir in the flour then finally add the chocolate chips, which definitely shouldn't melt when you stir now thanks to the time to cool, and stir until you have your completed batter. Pour the batter into the greased pan and shove in the oven for up to 45 minutes keeping a careful eye out. Cover the top with foil after it's coloured nicely so it won't burn while the inside is still cooking.

When they're done let tem cool and cut them up ready for when you serve them up to your friends. Finally wait patiently for the "mmm"s and "aaahh"s then you can mention they're healthy cakes since they have fruit in, although I'm pretty sure you'd be lying, but hey don't ask me how this 5 a day business works! Enjoy and let me know how they work out ;)