- Melting white chocolate and butter together into a fudgy, glossy base before stirring in the remaining ingredients creates a rich blondie with deep flavor and a slightly squidgy texture.
- Baking the mixture until the top is crisp and golden while the center remains tender and almost gooey produces a comforting “pudding” consistency that holds its form yet feels indulgently soft.
- Serving the squares warm with crème fraîche and fresh raspberries balances the sweetness with cool, tangy freshness.
This fudgy confection from Nigella Lawson’s At My Table uses ground almonds instead of flour, making the dish gluten-free. It’s a riff on MasterChef Australia contestant Chloe Bowles’ magnificent blondies, a recipe Lawson received when serving as a judge on the show in 2016. The dessert is much more of a stand-alone star than a bake sale treat: Serve pieces individually, topped with fresh raspberries and a dollop of crème fraîche.
Selecting the best white chocolate for this recipe
Since the white chocolate is melted into the batter, avoid white chocolate chips here. While the recipe calls for a white chocolate bar, good-quality wafers (aka pistoles, callets, fèves, or discs) will also work — either way, you’ll want to use half a cup. Ingredient-wise, look for chocolate that contains not much more than cocoa butter, milk solids (or powder), sugar, and perhaps lecithin and vanilla; pass up white chocolate that includes a fat other than cocoa butter.
How to make almond flour
If you have blanched almonds, you can grind them at home instead of purchasing almond flour (raw almonds with their skins will also work, but the flavor and texture may be slightly altered). Simply pulse the nuts in the food processor until finely ground, about one minute, stopping to scrape the sides of the bowl every 10 seconds or so to ensure no large pieces remain. Keep a close eye as you pulse or else you’ll end up with almond butter instead of almond flour.
Note from the Food & Wine Test Kitchen
To serve as traditional blondies, Lawson recommends baking for an additional five minutes, loosely tented with aluminum foil. Once completely cool, chill thoroughly in the fridge before cutting into squares.
