Raspberry and white chocolate blondies Take 2 and oaty biscuits

Determined to find the "perfect" blondie, I surfed the web for another recipe. This recipe from BBC Good Food popped up and although the reviews were quite hit and miss I gave it a go.

They may not be as photogenic as the last blondies, but flavour-wise I definitely preferred these. I loved the golden, crumbly crust and the melt-in-the-mouth almost fudgy inside with gooey chocolate chunks and juicy raspberries. I've talked you into making these haven't I? The only thing to note is that I didn't have the correct size tin so I had to use a slightly smaller one. I still put it in at the same temperature but covered the top of the tray with baking parchment for the last 10 minutes. I also had enough left over batter to fill 4 little bun cases.

I think browning the butter helped with the fudgy flavour, although it did cause me to have a near freak out as I thought I had burnt rather than browned it as there were loads of funny bits in it. I ended up melting more butter, which I didn't need in the end, so I decided to make oaty biscuits with it.

I had forgotten how tasty these syrupy oat biscuits were. We used to make these a lot with Mum when we were little as the recipe is very easy. It's the perfect type of homemade biscuit to have in the tin for when visitors come past. Unfortunately by the time I had finished making these it was late and I had lost all energy to take a good photograph. No attempt to hide the biscuits with the slightly burnt edges or remove the crumb in the foreground!

Oat Shortie Biscuits
Recipe from Mum's little baking book

50g (2oz) lard
50g (2oz) marg
100g (4oz) sugar (I used caster)
1 tsp syrup
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp boiling water
100g (4oz) self-raising flour
100g (4oz) porrage oats

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Since I already had roughly 4oz of melted butter I didn't bother with the lard. I then added the sugar and stirred in the syrup, soda and boiling water. Do not bring to the boil. Add the oats and flour and mix well. Pack together in in teaspoonfuls (or bigger if you want larger biscuits) and place on the tray. I think I had around 8 on a tray, and made roughly 20 biscuits in total. I also added more syrup to the mixture as it wasn't sticking together very well. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden.