Baking & Bugs

Bonjour mes amis, I have a question to ask you all… don’t you absolutely love baking at night? In my case I love it especially when everyone is out but even when everyone is asleep, you can still just wiggle down in your jammies and no one will look at you with raised eyebrows when you eat the batter (more than one spoon… shhhh no one is looking)

So that was the kind of evening I envisioned for myself yesterday night when my family was out, my brother was asleep and it was just me, my impulse and a huge bag of chocolate chips, blocks and ingredients begging to be used

And so there I went, iPod plugged in, dancing and whisking around, eatingmelting my chocolate and butter, cracking eggs, all the usual stuff when one of my chocolate chips rolled in behind the toaster. I popped in my baking and then went straight to clean it up. Seeing as summer is right around the corner, it had to be removed, lest it melted and attracted all the wrong kinds of guests.

And that’s when I saw one had come a little bit early.

Shocked is a little bit of an understatement… it was big, black, thankfully not furry, but fast scuttling on its twiggy little legs. It went this way, and that way, and this way and all over my phone, my recipe and all I could do was stand there, feeling like my heart was about to pop out of my chest and that my lungs would burst from hyperventilation style breathing.

You may see this as a bit of an overreaction – god knows my family does considering I can hold snakes and pet them quite happily. But I. HATE. BUGS. Something, anything, small with eyes the size of its stomach and more than 4 legs is not normal! Perhaps if they looked like those cute but dirty buggers in Mortein ads, I would not be scared to put them outside but please, these are more than dirty, they are horror movie scary – NO WORSE!

Anyway, so while I was dying, contemplating whether to wake up an exhausted brother to save me from this could-be-life-threatening insect, my heart suddenly stopped. It had disappeared. Ok, so now it was a ghost freak too. Just what I need right?

But hey, it was gone and that was cool so I went about relaxing while white chocolate aroma wafted around me. I went upstairs to check something, came back to find it was flying. Excuse me but microevolution in my kitchen? It made me want to cry, vomit and die all at the same time…

It fluttered off towards some couches and *PING* off goes the timer – I literally ran into the kitchen, took out the bakes for a wire rack, checked the oven was off, closed all the doors and ran like some banshee upstairs.

Whatcha gonna do now bug?

Now honestly you think bugs are more scared of you than you are of them? Please…

I reckon my blondies were absolutely the perfect way to comfort myself while my mum rolled her eyes and asked how I would ever live by myself. They were chock a block full of anything that would make someone go high with happiness and team that with fudgy perfection of white chocolate.

Bug… what bug?

Double Peanut Chocolate Blondies
Source: Adapted from Exclusively Food

Makes: 24 slices

Ingredients:

• 120g butter
• 200g white chocolate
  
• 60g self raising flour
• 160g plain flour
• 100g peanut butter chips
• 100g milk chocolate chips
• 50g salted beer nuts (peanuts), skinned
  
• 2 eggs, room temperature
• 1 tbs vanilla essence
• 112g caster sugar
• Crushed peanuts (optional)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C (160 degrees C fan-forced oven)
2. Line a 27.5x18cm rectangular slice pan with aluminum foil and then line with a baking paper (the foil prevents overbrowning which is so common in blondies)
   

   Just place the baking paper on top as always, no need to grease

3. Melt the butter and 200g of white chocolate in a large saucepan over medium-low heat and melt until smooth. Set aside
4. In a large bowl, stir together flours, both types of chips and the beer nuts together (not the crushed peanuts)
   
5. Stir sugar into the melted chocolate mixture
6. Stir in one egg at a time, stirring quickly and the essence (after the first egg, the mixture will look like its separating but add the second egg and keep at it )
   
7. Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour in white chocolate mixture
   
8. Stir together until just combined and then transfer to the prepared pan. Sprinkle with the crushed peanuts if desired
   
9. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out with gooey crumbs
   
10. Let sit till at room temperature then remove the baking paper and cut into slices to serve. If it is humid, refrigerate for an hour before cutting.
11. Store in an airtight container at room temperature or in the fridge if it is too hot.

Oh yes, then please, go ahead and indulge in it

And if there are any bugs around, have a bit more backbone than me

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