Custard Cream Blondies

I have two blondie recipes that are quite similar, both from Olive Magazine and both using classic British biscuits/cookies. I posted one a couple a weeks ago, and this is the second recipe. This recipe uses custard cream biscuits, which as the classic tea cookie in the UK. I normally have little trouble finding custard creams, but when I first looked everyone was sold out. Thankfully, they were available on my most recent trip to the British store. I know that I can have difficulty finding some items during the COVID Pandemic, and I am sure that it true for stores as well.

This recipe, like many British recipes, calls for two different types of sugar. It calls for Muscovado sugar and golden caster sugar. I thought I was good, but I actually have Demerara sugar, which is not what this recipe uses. Caster sugar is like our regular sugar, or perhaps superfine sugar, so I just substitute sugar. The “golden” part indicates some molasses, but brown sugar is too moist. Muscovado sugar is sugar with molasses, so for that you could use brown sugar. In the end, I simply used (caster) sugar for the two different types of sugar.

This recipe has you make the dough on top of the stove and then bake them. I melted the butter, sugar, and custard powder and then let it cool. I added the first egg and I immediately got scrambled eggs. Obviously, my mixture was too warm, so I tried it a second time and gave the mixture lots of time to cool. That worked, although it had slightly crystallized and I had to stir it a lot to get it mixable. Mixing this by hand is quite the workout, but I suppose it is good for me to do that occasionally. My pan is slightly smaller (20 x 29 cm, and a tart pan) so I baked mine on a cookie sheet and had a small amount of spillage. They came out great and they are very tasty, with a good custard flavor. It would be interesting to see how these differed if you used different sugars, but that’s a job for another day.

Custard Cream Blondies

175 grams butter
325 grams sugar
¼ cup custard powder
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
250 grams self-rising flour*
15 custard cream biscuits, chopped and divided
150 grams white chocolate chips

Heat the oven to 355 degrees. Line a 20 x 30 cm baking pan with foil and spray the foil with nonstick cooking spray.

In a large saucepan, melt the butter, sugar, and custard powder over medium-low heat until smooth. Remove from the heat and allow to cool for 10 minutes. Stir in the eggs, one by one, combining well after each addition. Add the vanilla and flour and mix with a spatula until smooth. The mixture will be very thick.

Stir in 2/3 of the chopped custard creams and the white chocolate chips and stir to incorporate throughout the batter. Spread the mixture evenly in the prepared pan and top with the remaining chopped custard cream biscuits.

Bake for about 30 minutes, until the cookies are golden, and a thin knife inserted into the blondies comes out almost clean. Allow the blondies to cool before cutting into squares.

* I make my own self-rising flour by combining 2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, ½ teaspoon baking soda, and ½ teaspoon salt.

Recipe from Olive Magazine