Every time I write the word “blondies”, I think about the old cartoon with Blondie and Dagwood. When I was young, there was little more thrilling on a Sunday morning than sitting at our scratched white kitchen table, feet tucked up to avoid kicking at the cold linoleum tile floor, and waiting eagerly for our dad to unfold the newspaper (the Baltimore Sun), riffling through the flimsy pages until he came to the colorful section of cartoons in the back. He’d carefully extract the double pages of funnies, as we called them, and spread them out on the table, pushing aside our half-drunk glasses of orange juice and plates covered in the detritus of breakfast: crusts of whole wheat toast, a smear of fried egg from our one-eyed giants (or, toad in a hole, as most people call them), a bit of strawberry jam clinging to the tines of a fork.
We’d pore over the comics, absorbed in the adventures of Cathy, wringing her hands over some dating mishap, or the hapless Marmaduke. I was too young to appreciate the dry office-related wit of Dilbert or semi-political humor of Doonesbury; my favorites were always Blondie and The Family Circus.
My little sister, at the stove making the aforementioned one-eyed giants for breakfast.
A similar breakfast scene at the kitchen table, all toast crumbs and grapefruit spoons and jockeying for position on dad’s lap.
None came close to the appeal of an entire book of comics (Archie, I’m looking at you here), but there was something gently comforting in the anticipation of a weekly comic. Of the happy chaos of the kitchen. The smell of toasting bread and melted butter. The warm nearness of my three sisters, likely in flannel nightgowns, their hair still rumpled and messy from bed. The tactile sensation of touching my fingertips to the silky page of newspaper.
Remembering what thrilled me when I was little is useful in two ways: First, often it will still thrill me (again, the Archie comics) and it’s good to rediscover those things, which I’ve often overlooked as they aren’t typically adult-centric (see: ordering hot chocolate instead of coffee, soapy bubble baths, sparkly tennis shoes, and onesie pajamas). Second, it’s a nice reminder that small, daily things can indeed be everything, if we’re open to letting them.
Because, truthfully, it’s easy to lose oneself in the big picture: the worries, the preoccupation with jobs and salaries and office politics, the general inner monologue of one’s day, the laundry piling up, the frustration with someone or something, the fixation on this scheduling plan or that obligation.
This poem by Stuart Kestenbaum (the poet laureate of Maine) puts it nicely—although rather than referring to the small things, he’s talking about how we forget to rejoice at simply being here and alive and able to breathe and kiss someone and hold hands and make apple crisp and do things like read and laugh at Sunday comics:
It’s easy to ignore the moment we dwell in
the time when we should be our own choir
shouting amen to every second that’s given us
but we forget and think only of the machinery
that’s driving our lives, the idling
engines of our day-to-day-to-day, the endless
tapping on the keyboards. Or else we’re waiting
for something better to come along, some
out-of-town engagement better than where we
are now. Life isn’t some film we can review again,
it’s live theater, and even if we could go back
what’s the point? Sitting in the darkened room
with the film ticking along and we reverse
the projector and see ourselves
returning in the car before we’ve ever left
walking backwards to our house
or leaping out of the water
we thought we were swimming in.
Lovely as is, even lovelier the more I read it (which I have to do again and again to let it really sink in).
I think more about what else excited me when I was four, six, eight, ten. What else could I start anticipating? Giving myself three dimes, cool silver disks weighing heavily in my small hand, to buy something at the penny candy counter of the ice cream store in our little beach town. Putting on clothes when they’re warm, just out of the dryer. Picking a weekend night to watch an old movie, and spending time selecting just the right one. White chocolate, even though later in life it’s much cooler to like dark chocolate. Semisweet is okay, milk chocolate is frowned upon as a bit juvenile, and confessing to liking white chocolate will get you an indulgent nod at best and judgmental retort (“you know it’s not actually chocolate, right?”).
Well, I baked with it recently and I still like it! Just as much as I did when we’d visit our grandparents in San Francisco and visit the Ghirardelli store on the wharf. For my purchase, I’d select a saucer-sized chewy white chocolate macadamia nut cookie. After leaving the store, I’d peel back the wax paper and nibble at it, trying to make it last with teeny bites, eating around the sweet white chocolate chunks until I had to bite them and let them melt on my tongue.
Here’s what I made: coconut white chocolate blondies. These are chewy bar cookies with the caramelized flavor of brown sugar. The original recipe, which comes from King Arthur, calls for dried cranberries but I am not into that flavor combination. I skipped the fruit in favor of more coconut. I bumped up the vanilla (which I always do in blondies, thanks to this Cook’s Illustrated recipe) and upped the salt a bit too.
There wasn’t quite enough coconut in the original, I thought, as it does help to balance out the sweetness of the white chocolate. So I added large flake coconut to the tops, which also gets nicely browned while baking. The batter itself has unsweetened shredded coconut, and make sure not to use sweetened! They would be cloying if you did.
Coconut White Chocolate Blondies
Adapted from King Arthur Flour; makes one 9” x 13” pan
3/4 cup (12 tablespoons, 170g) melted unsalted butter
1 1/4 cup (266g) brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups (206g) all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup (170g) white chocolate chips or chopped white chocolate
1 cup (85g) unsweetened shredded coconut
3/4 cup (45g) unsweetened large flake coconut
flaky sea salt, for sprinkling
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease, or line with parchment, a 9” x 13” pan.
Whisk together the butter and sugar until smooth.
Add the eggs, one at a time, then add the vanilla and salt.
Whisk in the flour and baking powder, mixing until the batter is smooth, then stir in the white chocolate and shredded coconut.
Pour the batter into your prepared pan, then sprinkle the flaked coconut and sea salt over the top.
Bake for 25 to 30 minutes. The coconut will be toasted and golden brown and the tops of the bars should be golden brown as well. Remove from the oven and let cool fully in the pan before slicing.
These freeze very well!