To the New Year & Chocolate Orange Blondies

I hope you have all had a great Christmas and new year. Here are a few pictures of things I've been up to over the festive period. Yes I am aware that most of them are food, this is an accurate representation. 
Soon we will all start coming to terms with the fact that on Monday, we will have to leave the last of the Christmas chocolates alone, wake up to an alarm again and put the leftover buffet away.

I will be heading back to London, leaving the countryside behind. After three weeks of eating, drinking and sleeping, my eye bags have subsided and my waist line had expanded. 

I always get excited about the prospect of the new year, taking stock of the previous one and looking forward to what the next year will bring. 

At this time of year, I start to make a mental list of things that I want to try to bake or cook this year. Things such as corn dogs (I've never actually tried one, so I thought, why not?!). I also want to improve my bread making and am going to attempt one every week (this will probably not happen, but it's the thought that counts no?). 

I'm not one for making resolutions, I don't ever keep them. After all the indulgence of the festive period, my body naturally wants to lay of the rich indulgence I have greedily forced upon it, for example It's already wanting to exercise, something that I have to say doesn't come naturally to me. 

To finish of the year, my god daughter and I made a quick chocolate orange blondie. I wasn't planning to put this on the blog as I wasn't happy with the final look, but my god daughter informed me that it was too delicious not to. The recipe was an adapted one from 

Phyllis Grant over on Food52. The adapted recipe is below. 

Ingredients

• 200g unsalted butter
• 200g all-purpose flour 
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 2 eggs
• 4 teaspoons good-quality vanilla extract
• 150g dark brown sugar (light brown is a good second choice)
• 1 chocolate orange (reserve 6 segments for the top)

Method

1. Melt the butter in a medium-sized saucepan. Swirl it around a few times. It will foam and spatter. After 3 to 4 minutes, it will start to smell nutty. Don’t walk away. It’s ready when the sizzling quiets down and you see little brown bits drop to the bottom of the pan. Pour into a large bowl. Cool butter for 5 minutes. The warm dough will melt the chocolate segments a bit.
2. Heat oven to 350° F. Prepare your 8 by 8-inch baking pan with butter and flour, parchment paper, or aluminum foil (I find foil to be the easiest: just press it into the pan with a little overhang, no need to grease). Set aside.
3. Whisk together flour and salt. In another bowl, whisk together eggs and vanilla. Set aside.
4. Add brown sugar to the cooled butter. Mix with a wooden spoon for about a minute.
5. Add egg/vanilla mixture to butter/sugar mixture. Mix until combined and shiny, about 20 seconds.
6. Add flour mixture to the butter/sugar/egg mixture. Mix until there are still a few pockets of flour visible. Roughly chop the segments and to the dough. Mix until evenly distributed and all flour pockets are gone, but be careful not to over-mix! Spoon dough into your prepared baking pan. Spread evenly with the back of your wooden spoon (it will keep its shape). Spread the left over segments onto the top of the dough for decoration. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes. You can’t do the toothpick test with this because it always comes out clean. Instead, look for a crispy top that's just starting to crack. Firm slightly-browned edges. And when you press on the center, you don’t want it to feel really soft. Don't stress. You can always throw it back in later. Just know that once it's cool, it will firm up quite a bit. And once frozen, it is dreamy in all forms.
7. Remove from the oven. Cool completely before removing from the pan. The blondie block should pop right out (either pull out by parchment/alumninum foil or if in a greased pan, just invert onto a cutting board and carefully flip it back over). Cut into desired portion sizes and enjoy!