Cranberry and White Chocolate Blondies
Everyone meet Lara. She’s sitting next me, blogvising. We love her, and not because she helped with the blondies.
My mom sent me this recipe yesterday, and it reminded me so much of Starbucks’ cranberry bliss bars that they required immediate baking. The Starbucks bars were my favorite cranberry dessert bars until 20 minutes ago, when they were eclipsed by cranberry and white chocolate blondies. Lara describes the bars as festive, rich and scrumptious. Good adjectives. They tasted ridiculously good.
So here’s how the baking went: we made one batch, thought it looked like not enough batter, and decided to double it. Except we only increased the size of the pan by a little, and had to bake it for a lot longer. So we can’t say if the baking time is correct, but if you double it, add about 20 minutes to the original time. Bakes easy, goes down easier. Easiest with milk.
Ingredients:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup white chocolate chips
1 cup fresh cranberries, coarsely topped
Instructions:
Line a 7×11 or 9×9 baking pan with tin foil, and spray with non-stick oil. Preheat to 350. Beat the butter and sugars together. Add eggs and vanilla and continue mixing. Mix in baking powder, baking soda, salt and flour. Beat in dried cranberries and white chocolate chips. Pour the batter into the pan. Sprinkle with the fresh cranberries, and press down with a spatula. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until knife comes out clean.
wow, those blondies photograph beautifully!! how nice that Lara helped you bake these :0)
19 Nov 2007 at 3:19 am
Those look really delicious. If only your mom would send you a recipe resembling Starbucks’ almond toffee bars.
19 Nov 2007 at 8:25 pm
lol. did you know that chocolate was banned in switzerland for many years. read this
23 Nov 2007 at 8:13 pm
The recipe calls for dried cranberries, but the pictures look like you used fresh. Did you use fresh and did the sugar change because you used fresh?
29 Nov 2007 at 7:23 pm
Hi Stephanie,
You actually use both fresh and dry cranberries (as I think/hope the recipe mentions). Dry cranberries go in the batter, but then you sprinkle coarsely chopped fresh cranberries on top, and press them down with a spatula.
Thanks for reading!
Alex
29 Nov 2007 at 7:29 pm
Loving your blog, Als! Thanks for all the recipes.
The toffee-coconut-almond cookies rock.
These were pretty amazing too; I added a little more white chocolate to the second batch. And, with both batches, it took at least 40 minutes to get to the clean-knife stage, and that was without doubling either time. So thanks for the warning!
Meanwhile, since it was all I could do to drag my sorry self to Commons when I was a senior I’m in awe that you have time to shop, cook, photograph, and blog. But I’m glad you find a way!
11 Dec 2007 at 2:51 am