Mulberry Pecan Blondies

Ever since I got into raw foods back in 2004, I loved white mulberries. They’re like nature’s caramels; chewy, sweet and taste like caramel. Back in the day I used to snack on these alongside some raw cashews and that was a brilliant combo. Recently, I revisited this combo and found it was made even better with pecans and chocolate, so I decided to make a treat that combined and highlighted all these elements. However, the most important thing was to keep it simple and these Mulberry Pecan Blondies are so easy to make!

Where can I buy white mulberries?

These days you can find white mulberries in health food stores, but, if your local doesn’t carry them here are a few places you can get them from in the U.K. Firstly, Amazon sells them, of course. But I bought mine from Real Food Source. They sell them as either whole mulberries or mulberry pieces. For this recipe, I used the pieces, but, if you don’t have access to those, you can just dry out the berries (so they’re not too sticky) and pulse them into pieces, or a rough flour, in the food processor.

Would other fruits would work in these blondies?

Honestly, there’s no replacement for white mulberries. There’s no other dried fruit with a similar caramel/toffee flavour profile or chewy texture. So, do yourself a solid and try them out, they’re so good! You won’t regret it.

What’s the shelf life of the blondies?

In this recipe, I don’t use water to bind the mixture together. Instead, I used maple, which will give a much longer shelf life. Water is what shortens the shelf life of products, as well as oxygen. For this reason, coating them in chocolate is a great way to preserve them as it cuts off oxygen. If you use water, then it’ll be best to store them in the fridge – they’ll keep about 3 weeks. When using maple, you can store them at room temp for 1-2 months in an airtight container.

Medicine Flower Extracts

If you have a look through most of my free recipes, you’ll see I use Medicine Flower Extracts a lot. I love these extracts and use them in my own everyday food. I use them to make amazing homemade ‘soda’ with just a flavour extract, stevia and sparkling water. They’re super potent, completely natural and much less expensive than purchasing these ‘healthy’ soda alternatives that are full of sugar and use unnatural flavours.

There’s really no replacement for them in my recipes, but where you see me using vanilla extract, you can use your favourite vanilla product instead. You can just omit the extracts, what they add to the recipe is aroma, depth of flavour and flavour balancing. So, you might want to tweak the amount of salt and sweet you’re using if you omit the extracts as those will be your primary flavour balancers.

The link above goes to their own website in America, but if you’re in the U.K or Europe, you can get them from Being Whole

Can I replace the maple syrup?

You certainly can, however, bear in mind the flavour you are losing in the recipe when omitting an ingredient, specifically maple. Maple is a distinct flavour, unlike agave, for example. In this recipe I have intentionally used maple because it pairs really well with the other flavours and, actually, makes them all taste even better. That said, feel free to use any other liquid sweetener, or you can use a powder, but then the liquid content in the recipe will need to be altered as the maple also provides binding. You can simply add a little water until you reach the consistency needed in this recipe. Go with about 1 tsp at a time until it just begins to bind together, but not form a ball.

Can I replace the pecans?

Sure, you can do what you’d like. Roasted almonds also go very nicely with mulberries, but pecans match them in a way no other nut does. Particularly when you’re using dark roast pecans. I do this myself because, even if you buy them pre-roasted, they’re never properly roasted, in my opinion. To dark roast nuts, do it slowly. Pre-heat the oven to 160c with fan assist/convection. Spread the nuts out into an even layer on a baking tray, no overlapping or they won’t cook evenly, and roast for 10 minutes. Check them by cutting a nut open and checking the colour. It’s ready when it’s light-med brown inside as they will continue to cook after coming out of the oven. If they are not ready after 10 mins, cook further at 2 min intervals being very careful not to burn them – it’s easy to do when you’re dark roasting.

Why Tiger Nut flour?

I choose Tiger Nut flour because I wanted a more crumbly texture to the finish on these. I wanted them to feel light, not dense with nut. If you wanted to replace tiger nut, you could use oat flour, cashews or ground almonds. Just bear in mind they will create a different final consistency.

Do the blondies have to be covered in chocolate?

Dipping them in chocolate is not a necessity, but, c’mon, everything is better covered in chocolate! These are delicious as is, for sure. But, do yourself a favour, and at least eat some dark chocolate with them if you don’t want to dip them in chocolate. Dark or milk chocolate does so well with all these flavours, it’s criminal not to try it. If you don’t know how to dip things in chocolate, check out my free video tutorial here.

I use my own homemade dark chocolate to enrobe these, but you can use your fav chocolate and, if you want to learn how to temper your chocolate, click here.