Despite the plethora of brownie recipes on this site, there is no recipe for blondies. This is obviously an oversight on my part. I mean, come on, who doesn’t want a little sugar, white chocolate and syrup in a sticky square? Add in a tart raspberry and it’s like Christmas come months early. Or summer perhaps? (Given how I lost the fine-motor coordination in my fingers after my run this evening, I think that is a pipe dream. The run was necessitated by the consumption of three (yes, three) of these sweet, sticky more-ish squares this afternoon. And the need to do something that didn’t entail me sitting down at a desk. Getting out and about stretches muscles my body mostly choses to forget it has these days and reminds me I am not quite a vampire, yet. There is a blog post coming soon about the madness and embodiment of final-stage PhD writing up – and the endless consumption of Haribo starmix – but this is not it. It is Friday, after all.)

These are super duper easy to put together. A melt-and-mix method that means you can have blondies in an hour. (Mostly because they take ages to bake.) I’ve made these wheat-free, for not other reason than I felt like it. Feel free to substitute all the flour and ground almonds for regular cake flour. But try this version too! I imagine these would work perfectly with an ice-cream, possibly raspberry ripple perhaps? As it starts to get warmer I begin to long for an ice-cream machine… Anyways.

White Chocolate and Raspberry Blondies

150g unsalted butter
100g creamed honey
50g golden caster sugar
150g golden syrup
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
100g white spelt flour
50g rice flour
50g ground almonds
2 tsp baking powder
100g white chocolate
1 cup raspberries (either fresh or frozen)

Line a square baking tin with parchment paper and preheat the oven to 170C.
Melt together the butter, honey, sugar, golden syrup and vanilla.

Set it aside to cool for 10 minutes. While you’re waiting, mix together the spelt flour, rice flour, almonds and baking powder. Roughly chop the chocolate.

Whisk the eggs into the syrup then fold in half the flour mixture. Put the white chocolate and raspberries into the remaining flour and mix lightly with your hands to coat.

Fold this into the syrup mixture.

Pour the batter into the baking tin and bake for approximately 45 minutes – until the cake is set and a skewer comes out clean. It may start to get quite dark on top halfway through so cover with foil if necessary (and you’re worried about it burning). Allow to cool in the tin for half an hour before turning onto a cutting board and slicing. Makes 16 pieces.