Maple Works for Winter

Having experience five years of drought (and a major wildland fire just over a year ago that was so major partly due to that drought) in the not too distant past, it is understandable that everyone I meet in Sonoma County is thrilled that this winter seems to be a rainy one. December was a bit dry, but the New Year has seen a goodly amount of storms and this week we are supposed to have rain for seven days running. Since all except a tiny bit of our precipitation happens in the fall and winter, this is good news.

The flip side is that it feels damp and chilly. A great time to make soup and stew and braises of all sorts, plus a good time to bake. A few days ago I baked some Maple Blondies using a new recipe I found in the Holiday 2018 issue of Sift, the King Arthur Flour publication that has so many tempting recipes. This was part of an article on maple syrup and it included lots of recipes including a Maple Oat Bread that I'll probably be baking soon.

Maple syrup, the real kind, not the ersatz pancake syrup kind, is made from maple tree sap that is boiled down until it is a syrup. The sap starts flowing towards the end of winter, so I always think of maple as a winter flavor. This recipe has maple syrup in the blondies themselves and in the optional glaze (which I skipped), plus maple flavoring. I don't care for the way maple flavor tastes, so I substituted pure vanilla and that worked out well.

These are a firm, springy kind of blondie with a close crumb. The chopped walnuts add both flavor and crunch. The maple flavor develops over time. The blondie I ate the day I made them was OK, but the ones that were in an airtight tin which sat in a drawer for a few days were excellent and very much immersed in full maple flavor.

These are easy to make. For one less bowl to wash, sift the dry ingredients together onto a large piece of waxed paper. Gather up the sides of the waxed paper and you can slide the dry ingredients into the butter mixture when it is time and then re-use the paper to wrap some of the cooled blondies for lunch boxes if you like.

Just be sure to read the recipe carefully. I forgot to add the maple syrup at the right time, so I had to add it to the batter later, which may have changed the texture a bit.

Happy snacking!

Maple Nut Blondies

from Holiday 2018 Sift, a King Arthur Flour publication

Makes sixteen 2" squares

1 1/4 cups (5 1/4 oz) all-purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

6 tablespoons (3 oz) unsalted butter (I used non-dairy margarine)

3/4 cup (5 5/8 oz) packed brown sugar

1/3 cup (3 5/8 oz) maple syrup

2 large eggs

1/4 teaspoon maple flavor (I used same amount of vanilla extract)

3/4 cup (3 oz) chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease an 8" square pan.

In a medium bowl whisk together the flour, salt and baking powder and set aside.

In a medium heatproof bowl in the microwave, or a 2-quart saucepan, melt the butter and brown sugar together. Remove from the heat and stir in the syrup.

Let cool to lukewarm, then stir in the eggs, one at a time. Add the vanilla (or maple if you are using maple flavoring).

Stir the dry ingredients into the butter mixture until evenly combined. Stir in the nuts.

Transfer the batter to the prepared pan and bake for 25 minutes, until the top is shiny and the edges just begin to pull away from the pan. Remove from the oven and let cool before cutting.

Optional: Make a glaze by whisking together 1 cup (4 oz) confectioners' sugar, 2 tablespoons (1 3/8 oz) maple syrup and 1-2 tablespoons milk or cream (using enough liquid to get a pourable consistency) and drizzle over the cooled bars.

So Many Posts and So Many Views and Irish Blonds

Sometime yesterday when I wasn't watching the number of all time page views for this blog passed 500,000! I started in October of 2006 and I will soon have posted 1,000 posts, so it shouldn't surprise me to reach that many page views, but it does.

When I started, blogging was a fairly new thing, especially food blogging as a specific category. Over the years it has grown and grown, sort of like the food shows that now saturate the TV airwaves. Some bloggers have become more commercial, either by accepting ads on the blog, by using the blog to further a business, or by having give-aways of merchandise of interest to food bloggers and foodies. I did that for a while, having drawings to give away copies of some nice cook books. After a while, though, I decided that I didn't really want to have my blogging be anything other than posting recipes and things about my life, including participation in a few baking groups I belong to or have belonged to. It has become for me a sort of diary and digital recipe box, along with a way to be creative with photographs, writing, and the alterations of recipes.

Today's recipe is a perfect example of that creative impulse. While working on my new Index ...which may take a while...I came across a recipe I had baked for blondies, the anti-brownie. For some reason my mind started turning to how I could incorporate some Irish elements into the recipe, including Irish whiskey. Now I know that chocolate and Irish whiskey go well together since one of my all time favorite cake recipes is for a chocolate Bundt cake with Irish whiskey in it. Putting it effectively into a blondie recipe might be more difficult. Redheads and women with dark hair and fair skin are often the types we associate with Ireland, but they do have blonds, too. Hence, Irish Blonds.

In thinking about Irish baked goods I remembered that they often contain currants (as in current scones and tea brack for instance), so I decided to soak some currents in Irish whiskey, then use the whiskey that didn't soak in as part of the liquid in the recipe. Irish recipes also often contain golden raisins, so I decided to use some of them. I like walnuts in blondies, so those were included, too. Part of the all-purpose flour was replaced with King Arthur Flour Irish whole-meal flour, too. Then I added white chocolate chips, not because they are Irish but because the recipe now sounded like one that would do well with white chocolate.

While they were baking I took a cock-eyed photo of late afternoon light on the farm by the back fence. The fragrance of these cookies baking was too intoxicating to stay in the kitchen.

Sweetie might have just been dazed by smelling them baking when he said it, but he declared these the best bar cookies I've ever made. They are very chewy...think nuts, currants, raisins and the whole wheat flour making them more than usually chewy...but still soft except for the edges by the pan sides. They are fruity sweet instead on overly sugar sweet because I reduced the sugar a bit. You can really taste the Irish whisky, especially in the currants, but it is complementary rather than assertive in flavor. You might enjoy these, too. Believe me, you don't have to be Irish to enjoy them.

Irish  Blonds

A variation of a recipe by Jill O’Connor in Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey, Desserts for the Serious Sweet Tooth.

SOAKER:

1/2 cup currants soaked in
1/2 cup Irish whiskey

BATTER:

1 cup (2 sticks) butter

2 cups firmly packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar

4 large eggs

1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

1 teaspoon salt

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour or Irish whole-meal flour

¾ teaspoon baking powder

MIX-IN INGREDIENTS:
1  cup nuts – I used walnut pieces, coarsely chopped

1 cup white chocolate chips

1 cup golden raisins

Position oven rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees F. Use cooking spray to lightly coat a 9 x 13 inch baking pan.

Melt the butter and sugars together in a large heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Cook, stirring constantly, until the butter and sugars are blended and completely melted and starting to bubble gently. Remove the pan from heat and let the mixture cool slightly.

In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, vanilla and salt. Drain the Soaker currents over a small bowl. Set the currents aside and put the liquid drained off into the egg mixture.Slowly whisk the eggs mixture into the cooled butter and sugar mixture just until combined. Whisk in the flours and baking powder to form a loose batter. (Make sure the batter is cool before stirring in the remaining ingredients, otherwise the chocolate will start to melt before the bars are baked.)

Stir the nuts, white chocolate chips, golden raisins and the drained currents into the cooled batter. (I mixed all of the "mix-in" ingredients together in a very large measuring cup before adding to the batter. That way I knew that there wouldn’t be a clump of nuts here and a clump of white chocolate there, but rather a nice mix of all the goodies.) Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top with a spatula.

Bake until the top is shiny and slightly crackled and feels firm to the touch, 30 – 35 minutes. A wooden skewer inserting into the batter should come out with moist crumbs clinging to it. Let cool on a wire rack to room temperature, then cut into bars and serve.

Makes 15 large or 30 small bars.