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Today’s recipe comes from Pampered Chef’s website.

I’d been searching the website for recipes using one of the spice blends I’d purchased when I saw this recipe and could not pass up printing it out.

Strawberry blondies

INGREDIENTS

— 12 strawberries, stems removed

— 1/2 cup white chocolate morsels

— 3/4 cup butter, melted

— 1 cup packed brown sugar

— 2 eggs 1 tablespoon vanilla extract

— 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

— 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

— 1/2 teaspoon salt

INSTRUCTIONS

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place half of the strawberries into the manual food processor and process until finely chopped.

Place the chocolate morsels in a small microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on medium for two minutes, stirring every 30 seconds until melted.

Add the melted chocolate to the strawberries and process to combine.

Add the butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla and strawberry mixture to the batter mixer and dispenser. Add the flour, baking powder and salt, and pump the handle to combine.

Place the dispenser cap on the plunger and select the large dot. Dispense one pump of batter into each well of the brownie pan. Cut the remaining strawberries in half and place one half, cut side down, in each well.

Bake for 18 to 22 minutes, or until a cake tester and releaser inserted into the blondie comes out clean.

Let the blondies cool in the pan for five minutes before releasing.

 

When Brad came home from the grocery with a large container of strawberries, I knew it was time to try this recipe.

I don’t have all of the Pampered Chef products mentioned in the recipe so I improvised while preparing the blondies.

I preheated the oven, then got to work on the recipe.

I washed and dried 12 medium-sized strawberries. I placed half of them in the manual food processor (the only product mentioned in the article that I have).

I pumped the handle until the strawberries were finely chopped, then moved on to melting the white chocolate.

I placed a half cup of the white morsels into the microwave and adjusted the power to medium. I hit the two-minute timer and stopped the heating a few times to stir the chocolate until it was smooth. It only took about a minute and a half.

I poured the white chocolate into the strawberries and pumped the handle a few more times to combine the two ingredients.

It was time to prepare the batter.

I poured the brown sugar, flour, salt and baking powder into a bowl and stirred until well combined; poured in the sticks of melted butter and vanilla, and it was time to pour in the strawberry and white chocolate mixture.

The strawberries I used were cold and that made the melted chocolate begin to harden back up. I ended up having to use a butter knife to scrape the mixture from the little processor and didn’t bother trying to get the chocolate off of the sharp blades of the thing.

I ended up with a few small chunks of white chocolate in the batter, but I figured surely, they would melt during the cooking process.

Instead of the brownie pan, I used two six-cup muffin tins. To make it easy to remove the blondies from these pans I greased and floured each muffin cup. You could use muffin cup liners, and you would end up with the same result.

I poured the batter evenly into all 12 cups, and then placed a half strawberry on top.

Into the oven the blondies went, and 20 minutes later they came out.

They looked nice and I was anxious to try them. Just as I was removing them from the pans, Brad came in and asked if he could try one. I said, “Sure.” We both had one and were totally sold.

These blondies were so good.

I was surprised though that the chopped strawberries I added to the batter seemed to disappear once they were baked.

The texture was more like cake. I was expecting something on the line of a brownie texture.

Brad liked these so much he ate more of them than I did. I was not expecting him to like these so much since he isn’t a big sweet eater.

We shared the strawberry blondies with his physical therapy staff and all three gals liked them them a lot.

This recipe is definitely a nailed it.

The only thing I’ll change next time is adding a few more strawberries to the batter and leaving them in bigger chunks so you can see and taste them.

I can hardly wait for Brad to go back to the store and buy more strawberries.

Sarah Condley is an amateur baker and chef who is compiling a cookbook of her favorite recipes.