Maggie Monday: Gettin Zesty With Blondie

zesty adj.

Synonyms: zest, gusto, relish These nouns denote keen, hearty pleasure or appreciation: ate with zest; telling a joke with gusto; has no relish for repetitive work.

 Once again Maggie, author of the Pony Mama blog is here sharing a great recipe. Zest, not the hearty appreciation kind, but the grated outer peel of a citrus fruit is so under appreciated. It always adds so much flavor. Much more than you get from the juice. I’m glad to see Maggie cooking with some. Take a look…

Need a summer dessert? These Orange Blondies might be just the ticket. My daughter begs me to make these to take to her class for a treat. They come together pretty quickly, and are sooooo sweet and good.

I made them for a group of college students once and as they licked crumbs out of the pan they told me the taste reminded them of Fruit Loops cereal! Not sure if that was a compliment, but I’ll go with yes!!

These are full of sugar, butter and eggs, so I won’t event pretend it is a “light” summer dessert. Nope. These are rich, buttery bar cookies. But hey, they are citrus, and that makes it summery, right?  And it is dessert for goodness sakes. We can splurge once in a while!

I can’t remember where I got the original recipe, but I’ve played with the amount of eggs and sugar over time. Feel free to make those adjustments according to your taste. Don’t skimp on the zest. More is always better!  I use a plane grater for a very fine zest. Smells so good! DO NOT use artificial orange flavor. Get pure extract, oil, or bakery emulsion. Totally worth it.

When I take these to parties or events, there are never any left on the plate, so I guess that is a sign that other people like them too.

Orange Blondies

What you need:

Blondies:

1 ½ cups flour

2 cups sugar

1 tsp salt

1 cup butter, softened

4 eggs (can use 3 and they will be a bit more cakey than chewy)

3 tsp orange bakery emulsion (can use 2 tsp pure orange extract or orange oil)

2 tsp freshly grated orange zest

Glaze:

1 ½ cups powdered sugar

2 tsp grated freshly grated orange zest

3 Tbs fresh orange juice

What you do:

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 13×9 baking pan. I prefer a glass pan for anything citrus.

Mix together the dry ingredients until well blended. I just put them in the Kitchen  Aid and blend a bit. Add butter, eggs, orange extract and zest.

Mix until smooth and well blended. Pour into pan and bake for about 40 minutes. Check at 30 minutes, but it takes awhile for the eggs to set. They should be a nice golden brown, but don’t over-bake- you want them to be a little gooey and chewy.  While this is baking prepare your glaze. This consists of just mixing together all the ingredients until smooth.

Remove blondies from oven, then take a fork and pierce the heck out of it. All over- lots of holes. Then pour the glaze all over the blondies, making sure there is an even coating of glaze over the whole pan. It will melt and ooze down into all those whole.

Let it cool completely, then cut into squares and gobble up.