Dark Days for one, blondies for an army

Sick of making cupcakes for every event I bring dessert to, I was looking for something a little more unique for my roommate's going away party a few weeks ago.  I had made these blondies a week prior, and they were pretty delicious, but I there was something missing.  Not missing, exactly, just... there to be improved upon.  I knew that I had to up the salt factor -- the perfect balance of salty-sweet is my holy grail for desserts -- and there just weren't enough chunks for me.  I needed more chunks!!



I whipped up a batch of home-made toffee and chopped that up into bite-sized pieces, and upped the vanilla in the recipe.  I needed the blondies to stay fudgy and not cake-y, so I also downed the cooking time just a little.  Definitely an improvement.  Such an improvement that this is the only photo I got of them after they went into the oven (apparently some party honorees think that they can break into dessert before dinner has even been served, because they're going to Africa and won't be back for ever!).



This refrigerator pasta was my dark days meal for the week.  I'm not used to cooking for just me, and since I learned to cook with my mum and godmother when they were prepping for big parties -- that's when my tiny hands were useful to them -- for a long time I could only cook meals that would feed me for months, or a Mongolian horde for a day.  And that was not a sustainable way for me to cook.  One of my major Dark-Days goals is to also waste less, so when thinking of what I could buy for my meal and finding myself too lazy to emerge from my house-cocoon, I looked in the freezer to find the motherload!

I had blanched and frozen local, organic zucchini and summer squash back when they were in season (why I must blanch them before freezing I am still not sure of, I just did it because the internet insisted I had to, and that was an argument with my computer that I wasn't going to win), and there were also some oven-dried tomatoes in there.  Not just any oven dried tomatoes though, oven dried, organic tomatoes, that I grew.  This wouldn't be such an accomplishment, since California summers are great for tomatoes, but we had an unseasonably cold summer, so my tomatoes stayed green along way into July, even though the plants had gone into the ground in April, and I didn't get more than 30 ripe tomatoes bigger than cherry sized.  When the first frost came my plants were covered in grapefruit sized, green tomatoes, ready to fall on the ground because of my benign neglect.

Anyway, I threw all of those things together with some organic canned tomatoes that I found in my cabinet, and was quite pleased by the delicious flavour the oven roasted tomatoes added.  Dried red peppers, plenty of salt and pepper, made for a wonderful dinner (and lunch and dinner and lunch, I suspect).  No recipe for this one: putting together refrigerator pasta is not something to be proud of.

White Chocolate, Walnut, Toffee Blondies, adapted from The Country Cook on Tasty Kitchen
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tsp baking powder
10 tbs unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups light brown sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten
2 tsp vanilla extracts
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup white chocolate chips
1 cup toffee chunks

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Start browning butter on stovetop, keeping the butter over medium heat and stirring frequently.  Watch carefully, once the butter starts to brown, it will burn very quickly, so keep an eye on it.  While doing that, stir together your dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking powder), and beat the eggs.

Once butter is browned, mix with the sugar and allow to cool a bit.  Mix in the beaten eggs and vanilla, and when those are combined add the dry ingredients.  Your mixture will be pretty thick, but persevere!  Add your chunks (walnuts, chocolate chips, toffee, etc.) and spread the mixture into a 9" x 13" pan that you've sprayed liberally with non-stick spray (or oiled).

Bake 25-30 minutes.  Depending on how goopy you want them, you might undercook a little, like I did, or you can go the traditional route and just wait until a cake tester inserted in the blondies comes out clean.