Brown butter cherry chocolate blondies

We managed to beat the birds this year in collecting a lot of our cheeries, and this was the first recipe we tried (original recipe here) although we didn't follow it faithfully it was totally a favourite for the summer of lockdown!

Ingredients

Blondies

• 10 Tbsp unsalted butter
• 1 1/4 cups light brown sugar
• 1tbl flax seed in 3tbl of water
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• pinch salt
• 1 1/4 cups flour
• 1 cup ripe cherries, pitted and quartered
• 100g chocolate, chopped into small pieces, approx 0.5mm

Topping

• 1/4 cup ripe cherries, pitted and quartered
• 30g semisweet chocolate, chopped

Method

• Make Brown Butter: Cook butter in a heavy saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly until it foams, turns clear, and then turns a deep brown, apparently this should take about 6mins but it took longer. The butter separates and leaves grainy pieces in the bottom. I filter out the grainy bits. Pour brown butter into a medium bowl and let cool to room temperature.
• Preheat oven to 180c and line an 8-inch square baking pan with parchment paper
• Add brown sugar, flax seed egg replacement, extract, and salt to bowl and whisk until smooth. 
• Fold in flour just until incorporated, then fold cherries and chocolate into batter. 
• Scrape batter into prepared pan and use a piece of parchment paper coated with nonstick spray to press batter evenly into pan. 
• Top with remaining cherries and chocolate, pressing gently into the batter; tap pan sharply to remove air bubbles.
• Bake for approx 35 minutes, until golden and set in the middle, and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean or with a few crumbs attached. 
• Cool completely in pan on a wire rack.  Carefully lift parchment to remove bars from pan and place on a cutting board; cut into squares with a sharp knife.

Preserving Cherries

So it is that time of the year that the garden starts giving me the challenge of what to do with the fruit it is busily producing. This is the first year we have managed to get anything off the cherry tree. So pleased but struggled to find a way to use them all up. So I decided to try the recipe from Tori Avey. I found the following:

• This recipe was way too sweet for  me
• De-steming before doing this meant the cherries went black at that point very quickly, don't destem until ready to make the preserve (read this to find out how to stop the discolouring happening, this is also useful as cherries go a funny colour as you pit them)
• It takes an age to cut stones out of the cherries
• It takes longer to create the syrup than she states
• Cherries stain your hands when destoning with a knife
• 2lb makes just about two jars of preserved cherries
• This recipe had a lot of left over liquid even after additional reduction process.

Ingredients

• 2lb cherries - before stoning and steming
• 2 cups of sugar
• 4 cups of water

Methodology

• Put the water and sugar mix on the stove to boil
• Whilst mix is boiling pit the cherries
• When the mix is like a thin syrup - thicker than water, but not quite like honey - add cherries
• Bring back to a boil
• Simmer for 30 mins, in an open pan
• Check the liquid - it should have reduced to around 2 cup by this point. You may not use all the liquid in the jars.
• Allow to cool in the pan
• Add to sterilised jars - cover fruit with the syrup, leaving 1/2 inch at the top
• Keep in the fridge