Walnut Blondie

My baking dreams started right from my school days and I should say that all my past experiments with baking have been disastrous! That was a time when we did not have an oven at home and tried to bake cakes in the cooker, or even in the sandwich toaster. Moreover we did not have supermarkets that sold baking ingredients like today, so we would substitute ingredients with readily available stuff. And the biggest limitation was that we tried to do all the baking without egg. Eggless cakes are possible, but we need to substitute egg with skill, not just milkmaid or sprite.
I'm not a regular baker or a good baker or an intuitive baker, but I hope to master the art in due course of time. For the past couple of trials, I have been baking cakes with eggs, and they turn out quite good, although not perfect. Since I do not the understand the chemistry of baking, I do not experiment with the recipes, but follow someone's tried and tested recipe to the T. That works out best when you want to avoid disasters.
I baked a walnut blondie for G's birthday yesterday. A blondie is a brownie without chocolate or so I understand. I'm not a chocolate fan and hence was impressed with the blondie concept. G does not have any preferences when it comes to cakes, so I let myself reign over the choice. Moreover, a blondie/brownie is a safe choice, because the consistency of the core can turn out any way and still meet expectations. If it is fluffy, good. If it is dense and cakey, good. If it is fudgy, better. If it is gooey and chewy, even better. What makes the difference is the ratio of flour to sugar to butter to egg.
With the following measurements, mine turned out dark brown and fudgy inside and a thin layer of light brown crust on the outside.

Ingredients:

1. Maida - 1 cup ( cup here measures 200ml)
2. Brown sugar - 1 cup
3. Baking soda - 1/8 tsp.
4. Baking powder - 1/2 tsp.
5. Egg - 1
6. Butter - 75 g
7. Chopped walnuts - 1/4 cup
8. Vanilla essence - 1 tsp.

Procedure:

1. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C.
2. Sift maida, baking powder and baking soda together thrice. 
3. Mix in the chopped walnuts with the flour.
4. In a bowl , melt butter and stir in the brown sugar. Add the egg and vanilla essence to this and beat well. 
5. Add the flour to this little by little and stir in gently.The resultant batter will be much thicker than usual cake batter and will not flow at all, but it will be more moist and sticky than cookie dough.
6. Grease and dust the baking pan ( preferably a square one so that it is easy to cute the slices; i used a heart shaped one because G wanted it for his birthday) and scoop out the cake batter into it to form a one-inch or slightly  thicker layer.
7. Bake for around 30 - 35 minutes or until a knife comes out clean. It is possible that the inside is still mushy after 35 minutes. That is because of he brown sugar and not a problem as long as it does not stick to the knife.  
8. Cool the cake for around half an hour.The cake will rise to double its height while baking, but will flatten as you cool. It will be dense and not fluffy 

I wish I had got some vanilla ice-cream  and maple syrup to go with this, but had to serve it plain and simple. It tasted good though.