Banana blondie fail

I was so excited about these blondies which made it all the more devastating that they didn't particularly work.

 
The first disaster was burning the caramel for the nutty brittle (why do I find this so hard?! It was like the tarte tatin incident all over again) but thankfully the second batch worked. I'm blaming the cooker as I'm convinced it's not level which caused the caramel to cook quicker on one side.

Disaster number two were the eggs. I had already mashed my bananas and cracked the egg on top. BUT...........the egg was off. Eugh! I had only poured it down the side so I rescued as much of the banana as I could which hadn't touched the egg and thankfully I had one extra banana to spare.

The rest of the mixture came together absolutely fine and I whacked it in the oven. The recipe stated that it should be golden and "wobbly-set". I thought it looked too wobbly so I left it in the oven for an extra ten minutes with the top covered with a sheet of baking parchment to stop the surface from burning.

Despite my gut instinct to leave it in longer I took it out in fear of over-baking. Blondies and brownies are deceptively tricky aren't they? They almost need to err on being a little undercooked to have the chewy, squidgy element as they're no use if they're over baked.

 

Well, mine were practically raw in the middle. After leaving them to cool and rescuing the edges (which tasted lovely, although very sweet) I put the rest back in the oven, hoping I could make it slightly more edible. This may have worked had I not wandered off and completely forgotten about it, resulting in this burnt mess.....

Saying that, it still tasted quite nice (although crunchy) so the recipe may be worth revisiting. I'm glad I persevered with the caramel as it brought a lovely sticky banoffee flavour with the bananas to the blondie. If any of you have caramel "issues" like me, whatever you do, DONOT put the hot pan of caramel in cold water (unless you fancy having shards of caramel in your face although I wouldn't recommend it). Set it aside on the hob for a few minutes before filling it with warm-hot soapy water. After leaving it to soak for a bit it will dissolve and wipe clean no bother. 

Come on, make me feel better. Who else has had a baking fail recently?