Pecan, Date and White Chocolate Blondies

In 2008 Jessica Seinfeld published her first cookbook, Deceptively Delicious. Born of the frustration of feeding small fussy eaters, she devised a wide variety of recipes addressing all the usual nutritional concerns of parents. Her creations were low in sugar, high in nutrient density and full of vegies and supposedly loved by her kids, her and her famous husband alike. Seemingly the perfect combination. Hers was a not a particularly unique niche except for the big ticket item in her mix and the meaning behind the clever title of the book. Her recipes were not only vegie forward and loaded but the veggies were hidden. And not just a rudimentary disguise but at almost where’s wally, espionage level disguises. Vegetable purees were added to a plethora of dishes not normally noted for their vegetable content and smug parents the world over patted themselves on the back for their ingenuity and trickery. Parents 1, kids 0!

I remember buying the book fascinated by the concept thinking that I too could trick my kids into believing a vegetable loaded brownie really did taste as good as the more traditional style. With budding enthusiasm, I opened that tome convinced I could beat those boys at their own veg resistant game. I was soon deflated. Have you read it? In order to embark on the Santa Claus style deceit, I was going to need to purchase an additional fridge to store the enormous range of fruit and vegetable purees I was going to be required to keep stored to stir through her recipes. I was then going to smile and wave as I handed my kids ‘treats’ containing all sorts of smoothly pulped, pre-cooked potions. Whilst a great concept it honestly sounded more time consuming than the dinner time disputes we were engaging in and frankly I was pre-occupied enough with the parental ruses of Santa, the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.

Aside from the time load I envisaged this method creating, front of mind for me, was the possibility that this would also make my boys unfamiliar with vegetables and therefore even more unlikely to eat them. When you search “hiding vegetables in food” in google the web offers up 9,000,000+ suggestions. As parents, we’re clearly not alone in our pursuit of vegetable love by our kids. It’s one of the many we seem to have aspired to as, enen by parents who perhaps even themselves don’t love veggies. Like sleep and toilet training it’s on the list of things we know as parents we’re meant to tick off. The list of tactics and strategies is long, full and often amusing. Spaghetti Bolognese with handfuls of grated veg, hamburgers or rissoles also loaded with grated veg, multi-coloured smoothies and my personal favourited sausage rolls with, you guessed it, grated veg. Who could even parent without a grater?

I had my own collection of strategies and recipes for fostering a love of veg with varying levels of success, or perhaps I should say ticking that veg quota box. We had ‘rainbow slice’ a collection of grated and diced veg encased in an egg and cheese mixture, also known as zucchini slice, but I wasn’t going to use the Z word. It’s a vague riff on this one, maybe I’ll share it with you soon. I also made ravioli soup, a simple pumpkin soup with kid size veg ravioli, corn and peas. Just between you and I, it was pumpkin soup loaded with pumpkin, carrot, potato and sweet potato for the ‘non pumpkin eaters.’

Like the short list of veg happily consumed here, introducing new fruit could also be a precarious path. But like veg, I had my ploys….or maybe I missed my calling as a quick thinking James Bond type spy. In an ‘adventurous’ moment as a mum I thought I’d try medjool dates with the lads. Reaching into the fruit bowl with curious little fingers and trepidatious eyebrows raised my son picked up one of the wrinkly squishy little blobs and asked what he was holding. I had one of two choices to make, honesty (as if) or another santa clause style fairy tale…. ”Oh, that’s caramel fruit!” I nonchalantly replied. “You know them. They’re the ones I use to make sticky toffee pudding.” It worked, he ate the fruit and I ran off to the pantry to hide while I silently fist pumped a parenting win.

Now, I’m not necessarily advocating the veg puree laced cakes and treats. Frankly they don’t really taste that great, at least not in my experience. I’m not singing the praises of parental deceit either, though a little white lie here and there, in everyone’s best interests won’t really harm. I’m just a mum sharing a little parenting hack or two from the other side. Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy a box grater and Caramel Fruit.

Are these blondies healthy in the traditional sense? Depending on what philosophy you’re living on, probably not. Do they contain fruit? Well yes. Yes they do. They have caramel fruit.

Ingredients:

220 gm white chocolate chopped

225 gm butter chopped

220 gm brown sugar

120 gm white sugar

1 tsp vanilla (because can you really bake without it?)

4 eggs beaten

220 gm plain flour

¼ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt flakes

125 gm pecans chopped

100 gm medjool dates chopped ( toss in a sprinkle of flour to help them separate)

70 gm white chocolate chopped extra

¼ tsp freshly grated nutmeg

Method:

Preheat oven to 160c (140c for fan forced). Grease and line a 19cm x 30cm baking tin, the sort you’d use to make slice/lamingtons/brownie.

In a small saucepan, combine chocolate and butter and melt until just melted and combined, don’t let it cook too long or heat too much, it should be lukewarm. Pour into a large bowl to cool. In a second smaller bowl, combine flour, baking powder, nutmeg and salt.

Once cooled, add eggs, sugar, flour, baking powder, vanilla, nutmeg and salt to the cooled melted butter and chocolate. Gently fold everything together with purposeful but gentle folds ensuring everything’s combined but not overmixed. Sprinkle in pecans, dates and white chocolate, again folding gently with only a few strokes. Pour into the prepared tin and bake 35 minutes or until the edges have pulled away from the tin and look slightly browner and crispy and the centre is just firm, but a skewer comes clean.

Cool completely in tin and cut into squares of your preferred size

Chocolate Coffee Slice

I live in the coffee capital of the non-italian world. A somewhat arrogant self-appointed moniker but deserving none the less. Café’s and roasteries abound on what feels like every corner, queues spilling out the doors of the most popular ones, a beacon to where to hunt out a quality morning brew. Everyone has their favourite, both for an ‘on the go’ cup and many, like myself, a favourite ‘dealer’ for the best beans. Indeed it’s a language all it’s own rivalling the finest wine tasting experiences with ‘tasting notes’ and notes of this and characteristics of that. The list of orders for a takeaway coffee is just as long and complex, and a language of it’s own with it’s own dialects from country to country, something that tripped me up on one visit to San Francisco many years ago, but I digress. Like many of my fellow Victorians I too have become a coffee tragic, though I don’t really speak the language, and no I can’t taste notes of passionfruit or blackberry in my coffee. What I can taste is morning bliss in a cup and like anything, I can taste what I like and what I don’t.

It wasn’t always like this however. Like many countries born of British heritage we were a coffee wasteland. Under the influence of British culture we were once staunch tea drinkers. My own parents, though the offspring themselves of tea drinkers, were coffee drinkers. Monthly they would buy a large tin, the size of a paint can, of powdered instant coffee. A fine brown powder that dissolved instantly in boiling water creating a watery drink with a flavour reminiscent of coffee but only vaguely so. Some even had ‘percolators’ elegantly presenting them at the table with what was considered the height of continental sophistication.

Whilst many remain with the whimsy of tea drinking the influence of mid-century migration from European countries brought with it a plethora of culinary delights creating an evolution in our own eating and cooking culture and preferences, and notably our beverage culture. Not only have we enjoyed the influence of Mediterranean cuisines from Italy and Greece amongst others, but also the delights of accompaniments with those meals of wine and coffee. We have one of the largest and most respected wine industries in the world and of course our coffee culture.

With only instant coffee at home I remained a tea drinker until my late teens. I was however curious enough to keep trying having enjoyed a sip of my mums ‘fancy’ cappuccinos complete with froth moustache and coffee and walnut cake at her tennis afternoons as a child. A burgeoning career in hospitality and the accompanying long hours made caffeine a necessity. And in love with coffee I’ve remained.

The origins of this slice remain under some dispute. It’s my take on an old recipe of my Nana’s which always appeared at the heaving Christmas table. Her version, sans coffee and with another flavour I’ve never been able to pin down. In my memory I called it Caramel Slice though it bares no similarity to the much loved gooey caramel slice we all know and love. So I’ve take a turn towards coffee and hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Ingredients:

Base~

100 gm butter

60 gm castor sugar

1 Tb cocoa powder ( unsweetened, dutch style)

1 egg beaten

150 gm wheatmeal biscuit/cookies crumbs ** (We aussies call cookies bisuits, these ones are commonly known as digestive or granita biscuits)

45 gm dessicated coconut

30 gm chopped pecans

Filling~

90 gm softened butter

1 tsp vanilla extact/paste

500 gm icing sugar

20 gm custard powder

40-60 ml espresso coffee

Topping~

180 gm dark chocolate

50 gm butter

Method:

Grease and line a pan measuring 19cm x 29cm. Extend the length of the baking paper some length up the side on each side in order to be able to use those lengths to pull the slice whole out of the tin.

In a small saucepan combine butter, cocoa and sugar and stir over a low heat until butter is completely melted and sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat and, working quickly, whisk through the egg until completely combine and smooth. Stir through biscuit (cookie) crumbs, coconut and pecans. Press into prepared tin and smooth out to a flat surface and refrigerate until very firm.

When base is firm, cream butter and vanilla until light and fluffy. Add 1/3 icing/powdered sugar and combine on low speed until combine then increase to high whipping until fluffy. Add half the coffee and combine slowly increasing once combine and until fluffy again. Repeat with remaining sugar and coffee until all combine finishing with sugar. Spread evenly over base again refrigerate until firm.

Finally melt chocolate in a bowl over gently simmer steaming water. When nearly smooth add butter and stir constantly until smooth and butter completely melted and combined. Spread evenly over slice and again refrigerate until completely firm.

Cut evenly into slices of sizes of your choice and keep refrigerated.

**Do this in a food processor or blender if you have one. If not pop them all in a bag and take out the day’s frustrations on those cookies with a rolling pin bashing them until finely crumbed.

Rocky Road

It was always the sweet smell sugar and chocolate that alerted me first. Small hand ensconced in my mother’s, eyes darting around for the entrance. The sweet heady aroma of chocolate and assorted sweets would waft from the shop door always drawing hungry shoppers in. My mum had a penchant for liquorice all sorts and straps. A bit of a monthly indulgence on our Saturday shopping trips she’d stock up ensuring there was always a jar of soft squishy liquorice black straps in the cupboard and a smaller one of cubes of all sorts. Not a liquorice girl myself I was always more taken with the mountains of chocolate. Jars and jars of it, all available by individual piece and more, wrapped in brightly coloured crinkly packaging invitingly displayed just within a child’s reach. I would always delight in the small offerings of the sales assistants keeping me occupied while mum stocked up…or quite possibly enticing me to pester mum for something yummy for me as well. They wore long full skirts that would swish with each step around the store they took and billow sleeved blouses, adorned with equally long bib and skirt aprons and full bonnets that reminded me of shower caps all as a nod to the heritage of the brand. They were the type of local brand who’s wares were coveted, indeed my mother in law always cherished a gift of a box of assorted chocolates.

Alongside her love of liquorice mum also loved rocky road bars. Come xmas she’d stock up on these some cut into bars in individual clear bags their squishy shiny marshmallow and jewels of Turkish delight shining out from the rich chocolate coating and others cut into cubes piled abundantly in bags with small fragments of nuts piled at the bottom like prized debris. She loved having a basket of goodies at hand that she could gift people. Generous to a fault she hated the thought of not showing her fondness for those around her at Christmas time. From the postman, to work colleagues, school teachers and friends everyone was thought of and many the recipients of treats from our favourite chocolate shop.

To be honest I’m a bit the same. I love small offerings of love at Christmas and do indeed include as many of those in my life as I can. Spiced cookies, shortbread, mince pies and fruit cake all feature prominently but his year I wanted to include something a little different. I was reminded of Mum’s rocky road love and as always my fondness for putting my spin on a recipe. I recall my small fingers as a child picking the individual jewels from the chunks and licking my fingers of the melted chocolate as my mind darted around with ideas for my version of Rocky Road. I’m particularly enamoured with these marshmallows, large cubes like small sugary pillows and fragrance that bursts from the packet. Tumbled with floral Turkish delight jellies, golden caramel popcorn and crunchy cashew nuts I like to encase them in dark chocolate to balance out the sweetness with a few pops of tart craisins for little bursts of sour. I’ve also kept the big, lovely pieces of marshmallow and Turkish delight jellies whole because it’s one less thing to do and then when I’m eating it and then enjoy chunks with each delicious ingredient. You could chop marshmallow and Turkish delight into smaller chunks if you prefer to have candy cocktail with each bite, it’s entirely up to you. You may also prefer milk chocolate or even white, it will all be delicious and loved by all those in your life to whom you make a small offering of chocolate love this Christmas.

Ingredients:

250gm turkish delight (rose flavoured, the pink one)

140 gm marshmallows

1 C dry roasted whole cashews

2 C caramel popcorn (remember Lolly Gobble Bliss Bombs?)

½ C craisins

725 gm of dark chocolate (I use this one.) roughly cut into small pieces

2 Tb grape seed oil or other neutral flavoured oil.

Method:

Line a 30cm x 19cm straight sided slice tin with baking paper leaving a few centimetres overhang on each side so you can easily lift the slice out for cutting when set.

In a large bowl combine all ingredients except chocolate and oil. You can cut up the marshmallow and Turkish delight if you wish. I like to leave it whole, saves time and the gives you pieces with big chunks of favourite ingredients.

Bring some water to a simmer in a small to medium sized saucepan suitable for a glass bowl to sit on top ensuring there isn’t too much water that it will lick the bottom of the bowl when placed on top.

Put chocolate pieces in a second large bowl big enough to fit over the saucepan you have simmering on the stove. Place the bowl on the saucepan keeping the water at a gentle simmer. Melt the chocolate until just smooth remove immediately. Stir through oil until well combined. This should help the chocolate cool a little so we can add it to the other bowl with melting the marshmallow and Turkish delight. Once cooled to room temperature, pour over first bowl and stir through until well combined and all the ingredients are coated. Tip into prepared tin, smooth out until mostly well distributed and pop in the fridge uncovered to set for at least one hour or until firm.

Cut into chunks of your own size preference and gobble up!