Pecan and White Chocolate Blondies

I have struggled with the concept of blondies for a while now, thinking of them as a rather sickly alternative to brownies.  However, I was messing around with my cookie recipe recently and realised that I had effectively made blondies...and they went down very well!  A bit more fiddling with quantities and here they are, if you think of them as a chewy, gooey chunk of vanilla cookie you're on the right track.

Makes about 20 small blondies

Ingredients

150g Butter

175g Caster Sugar

1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

1 Large Egg

2 tablespoons Golden Syrup

200g Plain Flour

2 teaspoons Baking Powder

150g White Chocolate, roughly chopped

75g Pecans, roughly chopped

• Preheat the oven to 175C and fully line a brownie tin or deep swiss roll tin (mine is 30x18cm) with baking/greaseproof paper.
• With a wooden spoon beat the butter and sugar together with the vanilla extract and the golden syrup.  Add the egg and mix it in, it may curdle slightly at this point.
• Tip in the flour and baking powder and mix it until it is all combined into a stiff mixture.
• Mix in the white chocolate and pecans until fully incorporated.
• Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and bake in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes or until it's risen and golden brown at the edges, puffy but still a bit wobbly in the middle.  
• Allow it to cool almost fully in the tin until it has firmed up enough to take it out by the paper and put it on a board.  Leave it until it is totally cool then cut into pieces.