Description
Pile any and all the mix-ins you can think of into brown butter blondies for a chewy bar full of textures and flavors. You won’t soon forget these bars!
Ingredients
Scale
- Cooking spray for the pan
- 1 stick butter (113 g)
- 1/3 cup powdered sugar (40 g)
- 1/3 cup light brown sugar (66 g)
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 large whole egg plus 1 egg yolk
- 1 tsp vanilla paste
- 1 cup all-purpose flour (130 g)
- 1 and 1/2 cups various mix-ins (nuts, dried fruit, chocolate, salty crunchy things like potato chips or pretzels, chocolate candy etc)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350F (180 C).
- Lightly spray an 8″x8″ pan with cooking spray, then cut a piece of parchment to line the bottom and sides of one side. Spray over the top of this piece of parchment, then cut another one to go across the remaining 2 sides of the pan.
- 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.
- While the butter is browning, fill the bottom of a double boiler with about 1″ of water, 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 a double boiler.
- 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.
- Once the butter has browned, set it in a bowl to cool slightly.
- 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.
- While the butter mix is cooling, coarsely chop your mix-ins. Set aside a handful of each for topping the blondies.
- Dump the flour and the mix-ins (minus the ones you set aside) into the cooled butter mix. Quickly fold everything together until the flour disappears into the batter.
- Smooth the mixture into the prepared pan.
- Scatter the reserved mix-ins over the top of the blondies.
- Bake for 18-20 minutes until the edges are browning and the middle is just barely no longer jiggling.
- Cool the blondies completely before cutting.
Notes
Ideas for mix-ins:
- Nuts: any raw, salted, or roasted nut; chocolate covered nuts, candied nuts like these Chai Spiced Maple candied pecans.
- Candy: Reese’s Pieces,
- Chocolate: chocolate chips, chopped chocolate bars, chocolate candies, chocolate covered anything, favorite candies like M&Ms, Twix, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Mars, 3 Musketeers, Almond Joy, Cadbury Mini Eggs, etc.
- Crunchy & salty: potato chips, pretzels
- Dried fruit: sour cherries, cranberries, apricots, dates, raisins
- Prep Time: 25 minutes
- Additional Time: 30 minutes
- Cook Time: 20 minutes
- Category: Bar cookies
- Cuisine: American
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 blondie
- Calories: 199
- Sugar: 16
- Sodium: 139
- Fat: 11
- Saturated Fat: 6
- Carbohydrates: 24
- Fiber: 1
- Protein: 2
- Cholesterol: 27