This recipe was published about a year ago in the Guardian, originally with peanut butter. The author, Meera Sodha, specialises in vegan cooking. The link for these blondies can be found by clicking here. I feel a bit bad because I changed the recipe very slightly. Although recipes are definitely there to be tweaked I do feel a bit sorry for the recipe writer and developer who has probably taken a considerable amount of time to get the recipe just the way they want, and more importantly to ‘work’.
Anyway, I did tweak it a bit. First I changed the peanut butter to almond butter because I prefer almond butter and I have a big tub of it right now. This week I have been enjoying my breakfast porridge with a teaspoon of almond butter stirred in and topped with figs or blueberries (or both). Really delicious. I wondered about using a different flavour jam, but I have a little pot of homemade raspberry jam given to me by a friend just waiting to be used.
I was a bit negative about the chia ‘eggs’ in the last post, so I thought I would give them another try in this recipe. This time I ground them in a coffee grinder so that they would be less gritty in the final product. And as another segue from the last post I used half regular sugar (soft brown) and half erythritol (sugar sub) to see how that worked out.
The result? Well I think they tasted better than they looked. In fact the taste was pretty amazing, and the texture was a cross between a squidgy brownie/blondie and bread pudding. (Mmm bread pudding – now there’s something I haven’t made for a long while!). The texture of the chia seeds was much less evident because they had been blitzed in the coffee grinder thing. For me that was a plus. Everyone who tried them said they liked them which is good in my book. And they are completely vegan!
There have been quite a lot of baking posts lately but don’t think I haven’t been out running. This time of year can be a little tricky as it gets darker in the mornings, so this week I switched to after work runs. What a beautiful time of year to go outside for a walk or a run. The trees seem especially fabulous this year, the colours so rich and vibrant, positively glowing like beacons in the fading light of the afternoon. The red berries and haws stud the hedges like little jewels or lights thrown in among the leaves.
In Perivale Park the wildflower meadows sown by the council are still looking wonderful, and the man made ponds have really filled up after all the rain lately.
Thank you for reading! I hope you are all having some little mini adventures in the kitchen, and outdoors too. That’s what’s keeping me sane right now!
Eat Cake And Run 