Salty Cashew Blondies

I've been on a bit of a brownie kick lately with this project, simply for practical purposes, so I figured blondies would be an appropriate next step. Claire has two blondie recipes, the first of which - the Salted Halvah Blondies from Dessert Person - I have already made for this project. It remains my most highly rated recipe of hers so far - I dream about them and cannot wait to make them again, once I've made every other recipe out of these two books. In my review of that recipe (which is here, if you're interested), I talk about how I usually find blondies too sweet for my liking, but that those blondies converted me. So I had pretty conflicting expectations coming into Claire's second blondie recipe, the Salty Cashew Blondies from What's for Dessert. On one hand, Claire had proved me wrong once already, so I had faith in her to do it again. On the other hand, I was doubtful that anything else could measure up to my one true love.

These blondies, as the name suggest, incorporate salted and roasted cashews. I feel like cashews aren't a very common nut that you see in very many dessert recipes, which is strange, because I feel like they have a milder, sweeter, more universally appealing flavor than some other nuts. Personally, I find them to be a little boring. I like my nuts to have a little more personality - walnuts? yes! hazelnuts? definitely! But I feel pretty indifferent towards cashews. I realized while I was making this recipe that I had bought raw cashews rather than roasted, so I had to toast them myself in the oven for around 10 minutes. The cashews get coated in a brown sugar-butter toffee mixture before getting mixed into the batter. I'm still learning the differences between all these terms, but quick research tells me that toffee is pretty much the same as butterscotch, but just cooked a little longer so it's solid and brittle rather than saucy and pourable. I'm not sure if I achieved the right texture - I was expecting to get a sort of slab of cashew brittle, but I ended up with something more like candied cashews with a slightly grainy, sugary coating. I don't think it mattered that much in the end.

I noticed a few pretty major differences between the blondie batter for this recipe and the salted halvah blondies. Firstly, there is no leavening agent in this recipe, while the halvah blondies use a little bit of baking powder. I think this is more in line with how a brownie is traditionally made. This recipe also uses two whole eggs, while the halvah blondies use one egg and two yolks. I think this change resulted in the cashew blondies having a slightly cakier and lighter texture than the halvah blondies despite the absence of leavening. I personally prefer a denser texture; that being said, I can understand if Claire changed the egg ratio in this recipe because she perceived whole eggs as being more accessible than yolks. I've begun freezing my eggs (no, not in that way), so whenever I see a recipe that calls for just yolks, I'll pour the remaining whites into an ice cube tray and then pop them in a big baggie to keep in the fridge. I understand it is a very strange habit to be hoarding a giant bag of ice cube-shaped frozen egg whites, and to be honest, I know I won't end up using them all, but it makes me feel less wasteful. Anyways, before I did this, I would always feel very guilty about having to discard the whites (or yolks, but I tend to not make egg white-only recipes that much), and that would sometimes turn me off the recipe completely. 

This recipe also uses a shocking amount of butter - 14 tablespoons, to be exact. I also noticed that it contains over twice the amount of sugar as the halvah blondies. The halvah blondies did contain white chocolate and tahini, which, between the two, provide additional sources of fat and sugar, so that's probably where this discrepancy comes from. The cashews aren't mixed into the batter, but rather scattered over half of it, then scattered on top in another layer. I'm not sure what difference this makes, but I'm assuming there's a reason for it. I also realized that having large chunks of cashew can make it difficult to cut the blondies into clean slices. Claire says to chop the cashews to no larger than pea-size, and I sort of went on the rougher side, but now I understand why she specified that in the recipe.

Overall, I found that these blondies were more typical of the ones I've had in the past, which were very sweet. Although the blondies were quite salty, I didn't think that element of salt provided enough balance with the very sweet batter and toffee components. As I touched on before, although the texture of this blondie was still decidedly not cake, it wasn't quite as dense and fudgy as the halvah blondies. I still felt indifferent towards the addition of cashews, but maybe I hadn't toasted them enough to the point where they really transform in flavor. Overall, this was still a good blondie, but it's not the kind of blondie that would convert me if I didn't feel strongly about blondies in general (which I don't). However, maybe I'm being a bit harsher on them than I normally would simply because I'm reviewing them through the lens of another blondie recipe I love so much. They'd probably be more of a crowd-pleaser than the halvah blondies, simply because they have more traditional, "safer" flavors, but I would really encourage the skeptics to give the halvah blondies a go. I just found that the addition of the tahini, white chocolate, and other elements give a really nice balance that you can't emulate by simply increasing the butter and sugar.

Verdict: 7/10

Would I make again? Probably not; I've already found the one blondie recipe for me.