Monday, May 05, 2008

Apple Pie Blondies

Comfort food! I'm generally not a huge fan of white chocolate, but in this combo the overwhelming sweetness of the chocolate is tempered with the flavors of apple, cinnamon and nutmeg. The texture is different from a normal brownie - instead of fudgey cake, it's a moist almost-bread pudding studded with lumps of spiced apples and drizzled with a concentrated white chocolate-apple ganache. It's best cold - the flavors are much more intense and independent than when warm.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention - the recipe is a follow-up to this post, as per request from Losillewen (I got it posted! What's six months between friends? :)

UPDATE 2: Commenter Topher was gracious enough to pass on her recommendations after trying the recipe, so I've incorporated them below. The big change - the ganache recipe has been halved so that even if you love ganache you won't have it coming out your ears for a month!

Apple Pie Blondies (adapted from Tartelette's version):
* 6 Tbsp unsalted butter
* 8 oz white chocolate
* 2 eggs
* 1/4 c sugar
* 1/2 Tbsp vanilla
* 1 cup flour
* 3 medium Granny Smith apples
* 1 Tbsp cinnamon
* 1 tsp nutmeg

Ganache:
* 10 oz white chocolate
* 1/6 c apple juice concentrate
* 2 Tbsp butter
* 1/6 c heavy cream

Blondies:
Preheat oven to 350.

Peel and core apples; chop into 1/2" cubes. Sprinkle cinnamon and nutmeg over apples and stir to coat.

Grease and flour an 9"x13" inch square baking pan. Melt butter and white chocolate together in top of double boiler over hot water. When melted remove from heat and stir to blend well. Set aside.

Beat the eggs and sugar until pale and thick. Add white chocolate and butter mixture, vanilla and flour. Beat just until smooth. Add apples and mix in by hand, being careful not to overmix.

Pour into prepared pan and bake 35 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool on wire rack. Refrigerate for 4 hours then slice into squares.

Ganache:
Heat concentrate until boiling; remove from heat. Pour concentrate over white chocolate and let sit for a few minutes. Meanwhile, heat butter and cream in a separate bowl. Stir concentrate and chocolate until smooth; add butter and cream and mix thoroughly.

Pipe ganache in a lattice pattern on top or spread across cooled blondies.

10 comments:

Losillewen said...

Ooh! My waist isn't thanking you, but I sure am! =) These look delicious, dear!

Anonymous said...

oh that does look like the ultimate comfort food. something about apples :) lovely. x

grace said...

these are amazing! i've been looking for an apple dessert that's not a cake, pie, crumble, crisp, etc, and this sounds perfect! of course, it doesn't hurt that i'm in love with white chocolate...:)

Patricia Scarpin said...

These look so yummy! I have never made blondies...

Tarah at Genesis of a Cook said...

Those look fantastic! I want one right now!!

Anonymous said...

you had me at "moist, almost-bread pudding."

Brilynn said...

I'm generally not a huge fan of white chocolate either, but it looks like it would work here, they look great!

Anna said...

I think I misread your recipe title. You said 'apple pie blondies'. I read 'heaven'.

Yes please XD.

Topher said...

I just made these today. I love the texture but have a few comments to make about them. I used three decently sized apples and after seeing them cut up, I definitely was glad that I used a 9x13 pan because anything smaller wouldn't have worked. Also, even for the larger pan size used, I used about 2/3 of the white chocolate frosting and was probably still way too much as it gave a layer of about 1.5 cm of frosting on top of the whole pan. So unless you really really like it I guess I would suggest to other bakers that they can reduce the amount of it if they want to save on anything. But I will say that I did really really like these as they were really moist and so delicious. Thanks for the recipe!

Weeva said...

Topher-
At the time I was making these for 50+ people and when I scaled down the recipe for normal human beings, figured "Extra ganache is good, right?" Sorry about that ;) As tasty use for your leftovers though: you could make a batch of cupcakes and either use it as the center or the frosting (depending on the consistency); or add some more white chocolate (to harden it) and make truffles. Or you could do what my boyo and I did - eat it with a spoon ;) Glad you enjoyed the recipe overall!