Coconut and Ground Cherry Blondies

I'm harvesting ground cherries (Physalis pruinosa) every time I get the chance these days.  It's not an easy job as they are ready only when they have fallen to the ground and they do this over a period of several weeks.  Now the days have drawn in, I can't get to our plot very often, so many of them are rotting in situ.  Harvesting generally means gingerly picking up what look to be the recently fallen and hoping that you don't get a slimy mess or a handful of slugs.  Because we have had a lot of dry weather recently, this task has been made easier and I have managed to accumulate a tidy number.  This is the second batch of blondies I've made using ground cherries: the first were in far too small a tin, so neither the dough nor the ground cherries got much in the way of baking and ended up being almost unappetising.  Thankfully, neither CT nor I are easily put off by raw cake dough.  Anyway, the idea was too good not to try again and this time I sensibly used a larger tin.  I took the blondie recipe I made last year and adapted it to use coconut flour and ground cherries.

This is how I did it this time:

• Melted 3oz unsalted butter with 100g white chocolate (Green & Black's) and left to cool slightly.
• Whisked 6oz vanilla sugar (use 1/2 or 1 tsp vanilla extract instead depending on how vanillary your chocolate is) with 2 duck eggs until mixture was very thick and pale.
• Stirred in chocolate mixture.
• Stirred in 4oz flour (spelt wholemeal), 2oz coconut flour and 1/4 tsp pink Himalayan salt.
• Added 3oz ground cherries
• Poured into a buttered 20 cm x 25 cm tin and baked at 180C for 20 mins.
• Left to cool then cut into 12 squares.

Thankfully, they turned out well; they had a satisfying state of squidginess about them, with a nice crisp top and just about cooked through.  Suelle at Mainly Baking would have approved as these turned out to be about an inch thick, which she considers to be the optimum thickness for a brownie.  The coconut complimented the ground cherries which have a hint of pineapple about them.  In turn they gave a delightful tartness to offset the sweetness that the white chocolate brought to the mixture.  This is a good news story for ground cherries as we now have another way to eat them.  Last year I used them to make muffins and an upside down cake.  Having just revisited these two recipes, I think I'd better make them again too.