VeggieGirl's White Chocolate Almond Blondies

We began this recently past weekend with such grand plans. I was rapidly recovering from my head cold, the weather forecast for Saturday was bucolic, and it seemed prime time to log some serious hours working on the yard and landscaping before summer officially traded places with autumn. I was going to re-mulch the gardens, mow the lawn, and pull weeds, and Zach came up with the idea of renting a pressure washer and cleaning the driveway. So early Saturday morning, we flipped down the back seats of my car in a vague attempt to morph my small, 40 miles to the gallon "cross-over sport vehicle" into a vague resemblance of the pickup truck I used to drive, and soon returned from the local hardware store with our surprisingly mammoth, industrial-sized pressure washer. (A bigger piece of equipment would surely make the task infinitely more efficient, right?)

Shortly thereafter, things began to go awry. With a dramatic clanking noise, the pressure washer broke, our hose exploded, and Zach twisted his back while attempting to fix the pressure washer, such that I had to drag him bodily into the house, leaving me quite alarmed regarding his sudden state of immobility.

So there we were. It was noon on Saturday, and we already had bits of broken power tools scattered across our driveway. As Zach flatly refused to journey to the emergency room, despite my protests and anxious flitting about, we simply improvised, and made the best of the day. Zach recuperated - rapidly, to my relief - while I managed to conquer the mowing and weeding, and then, to cheer up Zach and distract him from the tedious regimen of rotating ice and heat on his back every two hours, I fixed a batch of VeggieGirl's Famous Blondies - White Chocolate Almond Blondies, to be exact.

Oh my goodness. There is definitively a reason why VeggieGirl's blondies are so renowned. Not only is VeggieGirl multi-talented, beautiful, kind-hearted, and witty, she is also a blondie genius. These are some seriously delicious blondies, with a perfectly dense and moist, yet still fluffy, texture, and just the right decadent balance of white chocolate and almonds. If you haven't yet made a batch of VeggieGirl's blondies, you can find the recipe here... and you should seriously halt any task at hand and prepare some with rapidity.

I followed the recipe to a tee (which is unusual for me, I confess!), with the exception of leaving out the coconut as Zach isn't a huge fan of coconut (I know, scandalous... :-) For the "non-dairy milk of choice," I used 1/2 cup of chocolate almond milk, with which I am a wee bit infatuated... I was a little concerned that using chocolate almond milk would take away from the blond integrity of the blondies, but they still emerged as authentically blond as one could wish! (Presumably since the volume of chocolate almond milk was so small, of course.)

By Sunday morning, Zach was well on the road to recovery, much to our great relief... I shouldn't be surprised, though, and really, I should alert the doctors with whom I work - these blondies can cure almost anything. :-)