Carrot Cake Blondies just might be your new favorite mashup

I love coming up with more flavors for my original brown butter blondies, and carrot cake has been high on my list for a while. You’ll love the moist, chewy, fudgy texture and the easy imperfect decorating. These are pure potluck gold!

Why you should bake these over a regular carrot cake today

1. Less time commitment: With just about 20 minutes of active time needed plus a lazy chill in the freezer for easy cutting, you can make these in just over an hour. Cakes are always more of a project–sometimes that’s fine, but other days you don’t have the time.
2. More portable: Have you ever packed up a moist-iced cake like a carrot cake for a potluck only to worry about taking curves on your drive lest the cake slam against the side of your cake carrier and goop up your lovely cake? Me too–far too many times. You can pack these carrot cake bars in a Rubbermaid takealong or similar container and be on your merry way without worry.
3. A more casual eating commitment: A slice of cake is a lot of a lot. It’s not something you’d eat on a regular day, so a big slice is something to linger over, hopefully with friends, coffee, and conversation. With these bars, you get all of the flavors in a much more casual dessert. One of my testers told me that, “Cake is too sweet, but these were just right,” which I think was his way of saying that by the end of a piece of cake, you have that, “I just ate the whole thing” feeling.
4. Fun: Standard brownies and blondies are always welcome, but it’s fun to have seasonal bars with a lot of the same ideas with different flavors.

Places to serve your carrot cake bars

1. After school snacks: Pop them in the fridge and your kids will be grateful to have a little something to nibble on in those pre-dinner, I-want-to-eat-everything moments.
2. Spring potlucks: These are great really any time of year, but these bars definitely have a Spring look.
3. As a dessert in a new baby meal: Got a friend, relative or someone you know having a baby. Make up an easy meal and top it off with a batch of these bars.
4. Backyard BBQ: These are easier to serve than slices of cake, and they certainly fit on the edge of your plate that you’ve already filled up with everything else at a BBQ.
5. Easter dessert spread: Like my Easter blondies, you can cut these up into smaller pieces so that you and your guests can eat both desserts. Everybody loves to sample desserts!

Step by step process for making carrot cake

Make the bars

1. Line the bottom of an 8×8

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   pan with a parchment

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   sling (2 pieces of parchment

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   that cover the bottom of the pan and go up the sides, meeting in the middle of the pan at right angles to each other).
2. Make brown butter: Melt the butter over low heat in a small pan until the foam starts to subside and there are brown flecks in the bottom of the pan. On low heat, this will take about 10 minutes, though you can heat it on medium heat in about 5 minutes. Set it in a mixing bowl to cool.
3. Warm the sugars and eggs: Fill the bottom of a double boiler

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    with about 1″ of water, and then bring it to a boil. Use a whisk to mix the sugars, baking powder, salt, whole egg and the egg yolk in the top of the double boiler

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   . Lower the water to simmer, then set the top pot over the water, stirring constantly for about 4 minutes. In this time, the mixture will get thinner, paler, and all of the sugar will dissolve.
4. Add the sugar to the butter: Whisk the egg/sugar mix into the butter. If it splits, keep whisking. As it cools, it will come back together. Allow the butter mix to cool until it’s thick and no longer warm to the touch. It will be noticeably thicker and glossy.
5. Add the flour: Fold in the flour with a baking spatula

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    until the flour disappears.
6. Grate the carrot: Use a fine box grater to shred the carrot into bits over a piece of cheesecloth or some paper towels. Squeeze out as much of the carrot juice as you can. Save about a tablespoon of carrot to sprinkle on top the finished bars.
7. Stir in the mix-ins: Quickly fold in 3/4 cup of the white chocolate chips, coconut, and about 1/3 cup of the walnuts.  Scrape the batter into the pan and then smooth the batter in the pan in one even layer.  Scatter the remaining white chocolate chips on top of the batter.

Bake and Finish the bars

1. Bake for 18-20 minutes until the edges are browning and the middle is no longer jiggling.
2. Freeze: freeze the bars for 30 min so that the frosting doesn’t melt on top.
3. Frost: Beat up all the frosting ingredients into a smooth, fluffy frosting. Scrape the frosting into a disposable piping bag or a ziploc. Cut the corner of the bag and squeeze out fine crosshatch lines across the bars. Scatter over the rest of the walnuts and carrot.
4. Chill: Chill the bars before cutting for the cleanest cuts.

Tips for making the best carrot cake blondies

1. Squeeze out the carrot juice!!!: Don’t skip this step. Too much carrot juice in the blondie and the cookie base will get soggy and won’t bake up into the chewy bars we’re hoping for here. Just like in my zucchini oatmeal cookies, getting out that water means that you won’t dilute the cookie matrix. We want the vivid color and a little flavor, but not the sog.
2. Choose your icing style: I chose to pipe lines across the tops of these bars. I like this because it lets you see the white chocolate in the top of the bars, but certainly you can spread a thick layer of frosting over the top of these bars for a different look, more like my Irish Cream Brownies.
3. Choose your nuts: I use walnuts in my carrot bars because my Mom has always used them in her carrot cake. I like their slightly tannic bitterness against the spice and the brighter sweet flavors. Pecans are just as delicious. Use what you like. You can add even more nuts if you want. I added even more over the top of the bars under the frosting, but I REALLY love walnuts. You can skip that.
4. Pick your spice: I’m calling for chai spice blend out of convenience, but pumpkin pie spice, apple pie spice or cinnamon and nutmeg are all good choices here.

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