Friday, February 26, 2010

Maple Coconut Blondies



I’ve been really enjoying the Olympics coverage the past two weeks. I live about 2 hours away from Vancouver, so I’ve visited the city quite a few times. I don’t like crowds too much, so I didn’t want to be anywhere near the city during the Olympics! A couple of friends at work have been to the games and they said that the city had such a fun vibe and it was a great place to be. I’ll take their word for it, but I do think that my husband and I will pay a visit sometime soon.

When I am in Canada, I will often pick up maple syrup since you can find it in every store there. Of course, pure maple syrup is available in the grocery store these days, so there’s no need for you to make a special trip! I wanted to make something with maple syrup to honor the Olympics, and this is a recipe that I’ve had bookmarked for some time. Maple and coconut sounded like a great combination.

This makes a fairly small batch, so I decided to double the recipe since the folks at work are good cookie eaters. This recipe is as simple as you can get. Since I doubled the recipe and baked it in a 9 x 13 pan, I did have to bake it about 2 minutes extra. These are very cake-like, and you could probably serve it as a cake if you whipped up a simple maple buttercream. I thought these would be really sweet, but they aren’t as sweet as I expected. I love the maple flavor and the coconut adds a nice texture. I really enjoyed these and I hope you do too!

1/2 cup butter, melted and cooled
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup maple syrup
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup shredded coconut

Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly grease an 8-inch square baking dish.

In a large mixer bowl, combine butter, sugar, maple syrup, vanilla and the egg and beat until smooth. Add in flour and salt and stir just until no streaks of flour remain. Add in coconut and stir to distribute evenly. Pour into prepared baking dish.

Bake for 30-35 minutes, until blondies are set and lightly browned. Cool completely before cutting into bars.

Recipe from Baking Bites

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I soooo want to eat these!! I've always wondered what blondies mean, I think it's a North American term!

Maryanna said...

Yum! I've never thought of combining coconut and maple flavors together, but I can imagine how good it is. I love both of those flavorsl... not to mention that I'm a huge fan of blondies.

Jenny R. said...

Terrific blondies - these look so delicate. I wouldn't have ever combined coconut and maple, but now that I've seen it so successfully done, I think it's on my list of 'to do!'

Jenny
PS - my gmail account isn't linked to my blog, and I can't find another way to provide my URL (I don't have an OpenID account). It would be great if your comment form would allow the Name/URL option! :)
http://purplehousedirt.com

Cindy said...

These look so delish! I love blondies and can't wait to try this recipe.