These vegan strawberry blondies are made with a whole punnet of strawberries. Ground cashew nuts, brown sugar and vanilla extract encase the jammy strawberries in a creamy toffee-flavoured cake with the texture of a sticky brownie.
The stawberries are quartered and then oven-dried to the point where they are chewy but still juicy. The flavour is intensified when you dehydrate them, and they shrink to a fraction of their original size, which is why a whole punnet is condensed into a modest-sized traybake.
The main advantage of oven-drying them, though, is that they will be juicy, soft and chewy in the finished cake. If you use fresh or frozen strawberries, the result will still be delicious but will have more of a pudding consistency, with wet, squishy fruit.
That said, like brownies, these make a very good dessert with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream.
Since you’re turning the oven on, you could always dry out double the quantity of strawberries and use the rest to add sweetness and flavour to other things – they’re good in granola.
Strawberry Blondies…
Ingredients
- 250 g fresh strawberries
- 120 g cashew nuts
- 100 g self-raising flour
- 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 120 g brown sugar
- 60 g coconut oil (preferably the flavourless variety)
- 80 ml oat (or other) milk
- 25 g golden syrup
- 1 tbsp (3 tsp) vanilla extract
Method
- First, dehydrate the strawberries. Set the oven to around 110°C/230°F. Hull and quarter the strawberries and place them, cut-side up, on an oven proof dish. Bake the strawberries for up to three hours, until they have shrunk and are dry on the outside but not yet turning crispy. You may wish to turn them over after a couple of hours. Check them periodically, as all ovens are different. Set aside.
- Turn the oven up to 180°C/360°F and line the base and sides of a 7″ square or similar-sized tin. (The blondies are inclined to stick to the sides so this is one occasion where you shouldn’t forgo the lining unless you have absolute confidence in your bakeware’s non-stick credentials.)
- Set aside 20 g of the cashews and grind the remaining 100 g in a food processor or a blender with good blades.
- Place the ground cashews in a large bowl together with the flour, bicarbonate of soda and sugar and mix well to combine evenly.
- Soften the coconut oil in the microwave if it is not already fairly runny, and whisk in the syrup and vanilla before whisking in the milk (if the milk is cold the mixture may need a few seconds in the micowave to stop the coconut oil solidifying).
- Roughly chop the remaining cashew nuts and stir these into the flour mixture along with the dried strawberries.
- Pour the liquid mixture into the dry ingedients, stirring lightly as you go until everything is combined. Don’t over-mix.
- Transfer to the tin and bake for around half an hour until the top is a deep golden brown (see pictures).
- Allow the blondies to cool completely before attempting to remove them from the tin.
For a different take on a blondie mixture, using aquafaba and cocoa butter, see my recipe for Cashew Blondies:
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