Coconut blondies with almond butter

If you've never had a blondie before, sit down because you are in for a treat. Named for their similar texture to brownies, but not necessarily needing to be made from chocolate (hence the lighter colour and subsequent name), which gives you more versatility in flavour. I'm going through a bit of a coconut phase at the moment, and it seemed like the perfect flavour for a fudge-y dessert. I had tested my recipe once already and then Pip and Nut's newest flavour landed and was the perfect accompaniment. The latest flavour is a Cherry Bakewell almond butter and also contains coconut. Inspired by this, I tweaked my blondie recipe to include cherries to continue the Bakewell flavour.This recipe uses coconut flour rather than conventional plain flour. If you've bought coconut flour but are clueless as to what to do with it, this recipe is for you. Coconut flour is highly absorbent, which makes it a little tricky to work with. You need less flour, more liquid and more eggs to get an equivalent texture to conventional flour. Even with this tweak, the texture is a bit different to plain flour. I've made a few failed cakes and bakes in my time, and so to set myself a benchmark, I made a coconut blondie based on a recipe that used plain flour and butter, then baked both recipes side by side. The only difference between the coconut flour and plain flour recipes was that the coconut flour blondies had a stronger coconut flavour -a win in my books! That being said, if you want to use plain flour, I've recommended a recipe tweak below.

Coconut almond blondies

Recipe Type: Dessert

Author: Elle Coales

Prep time: 15 mins

Cook time: 30 mins

Total time: 45 mins

Serves: 10

Ingredients

• 100ml / 1/2 cup melted coconut oil or butter
• 65g / 1/3 cup coconut cream
• 4 medium free range eggs
• 2 tbsp smooth almond butter
• 75g / 1/3 cup brown cane or coconut sugar
• 75g / 3/4 cup coconut flour
• 1.5 tsp baking powder
• 40g / 1/2 cup desiccated coconut, plus extra
• Pinch salt
• 100g raspberries or cherries

Instructions

1. Preheat an oven to 160 C fan or 180 C conventional. Grease and line a brownie tin.
2. In a bowl or food processor, combine the coconut oil, coconut cream and eggs, beating until smooth. Next, add the almond butter and sugar. Fold in the flour, baking powder, desiccated coconut and salt. Finally, add the raspberries or cherries.
3. Tip into the baking tin and smooth out. Coconut flour-based cake mixes tend to spread out less than those made with plain flour, so make sure that you get into all the corners! Scatter over a little extra coconut on top.
4. Bake for around 30 mins until a skewer comes out clean and the top is golden in colour. Allow to cool a little before cutting, and do grab yourself a slice whilst theyre still warm!

Notes

If using sugar substitutes or coconut sugar, taste to check the sweetness, as you may need more than you would with normal sugar.[br]Coconut flour is very absorbent compared to plain flour. If you want to make these blondies with plain flour, use 200g flour and just two eggs.

Psst -the best thing about this recipe is that you'll still have half a jar of almond butter left! Fair warning warning, I've got through two pots of the Cherry Bakewell flavour already -well worth the trip to the supermarket! Did you love this recipe? Let me know below!Don't forget to pin the recipe to save for later!This recipe uses products gifted to me from Coconut Merchant as part of an ongoing partnership.