The first batch of brownies...sort of...

After our market research on Saturday, we think that there might be a gap in the (farmers') market for a stall selling brownies and tray bakes - sweet mouthfuls that people can enjoy with a cup of tea or even to eat on the way round browsing the rest of the stalls at the market.  With this in mind comes my two favourite parts of the process - baking and tasting!

So I pull down all my recipe books from the shelves and decide to start the hunt for the perfect signature brownie.   And there are many recipes to choose from that all have me salivating, spiked with all different kinds of nuts, flavoured with orange zest, caramel, differing degrees of chocolatiness and fudginess, topped with After Eight mints.... I think I might need to host a dedicated brownie party in order to choose between them :o)

And after all that, the recipe that sprung out at me wasn't for a brownie at all, but a blondie.  Like a brownie, but flavoured with brown sugar and vanilla instead of chocolate.  Despite being a brunette myself I don't discriminate, and the need for me to try Rachel Allen's recipe for Peanut Butter and White Chocolate Blondies from her lovely Bake book was just too hard to ignore.

The recipe was pretty easy to follow and put together, although I didn't have the right size cake tin.  Undeterred, I used my  trusty swiss roll tin and fashioned a "wall" out of tin foil that worked a treat and 40 minutes later delicious aromas were wafting from the oven as I pulled out the first batch.  I'm ashamed to admit that I couldn't wait for them to cool down and burnt my finger breaking off a sneaky corner to taste - mmmmmmmmm.  Yep they were goooood.  Buttery, laced with vanilla but balanced by the salty peanuts, fudgey in the middle and perfect with a cuppa in my favourite mug:

The only thing that I would do differently is to chop the white chocolate bigger so that it adds more texture - it seemed to melt away into the blondie.  Oh well, I'll just have to bake another batch....