Gula Melaka Chocolate Chunk Bars Recipe

Have you ever had a blondie? It’s not unlike a pale but dense brownie. And instead of all that chocolate lushness, blondies use ingredients like vanilla and brown sugar. Occasionally, it includes other ingredients like chocolate chips, nuts, and caramel, and the result often tastes very much like a chocolate chip cookie, albeit a softer, chewier version. And this got us thinking…

Having successfully made some salted gula Melaka chocolate chip cookies, we wanted to use this magical local ingredient in another Asianized version of a Western favourite, so we set our sights on the blondie. In fact, these two recipes even utilizes almost the exact same ingredients, making them two different sweet treats that you can easily whip up together. But instead of chocolate chips, we decided to use some chocolate buttons for a chunkier spread of chocolate throughout. You can also swap the buttons with your favourite chocolate bar, all chopped up. We recommend using dark instead of milk chocolate though. It’ll give your gula Melaka chocolate chunk bars an extra richness, plus it counters and balances the sweetness of the dough just right.

This recipe comes together easily and very quickly, making gula Melaka chocolate chunk bars the perfect treat to whip up if guests appear out of the blue or you suddenly have a craving for a sweet treat. The most difficult part will probably be grating your gula Melaka, but if you don’t feel like working your arm muscles that day, grab yourself a bag of already grated gula Melaka or cut them up into smaller chunks and give them a blitz in the food processor.

Ready? Let’s get baking!

Ingredients

• 165g all purpose flour + extra for flouring baking tray
• 100g granulated sugar
• 70g gula Melaka, finely grated
• 125g butter, softened + extra for greasing baking tray
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• ½ tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp sea salt
• 170g chocolate buttons

Preparing the batter

1. In a large mixing bowl, add white sugar, gula Melaka, softened butter and vanilla essence. Beat with a mixer until smooth and thoroughly combined, but it’s ok if small chunks of gula Melaka remain.

2. Add egg and continue mixing.

3. Next, add flour, baking powder and salt. Stir and fold to mix well.

4. Stir in chocolate buttons or chocolate chunks until they are evenly spread throughout the batter.

Baking Gula Melaka chocolate chunk bars

1. Heat your oven to 190°C.
2. Line your baking tray with some baking or parchment paper. Grease the paper with butter and give it a light dusting of flour. We used a 10”x10” baking tray.
3. Pour batter into the greased and floured baking tray, spreading it evenly to all the corners of the tray.

4. Bake for 15 to 16 minutes until the top of your blondie is a nice, golden light brown.

5. Once baked, allow the ‘cake’ to rest in the baking sheet for about 10 minutes.
6. Once rested, slice your gula Melaka chocolate chunk bars and plate them to serve. You can also remove the entire bar from the tray before cutting them up.

7. Serve warm with a side of vanilla ice cream for some add-on decadence.

Extra tips

1. You can use a smaller tray for your gula Melaka chocolate chunk bars. These will give you thicker bars, but you may need to add on some time to allow it to cook thoroughly.
2. Gula Melaka chocolate chunk bars are best served warm. Heat them up in a toaster or in a microwave oven for about 20 to 30 seconds to get them nice and toasty before serving.

Don’t they look good, or don’t they look good? Gula Melaka chocolate chunk bars are the perfect marriage of brownie and cookie and adding gula Melaka into this recipe makes it taste even more extra than usual. We won’t keep you waiting any longer as you definitely need to start making these stat! Don’t forget to share your pictures with us by using the #butterkicap hashtag.