American · Baking

Brown Butter Blondies

The blondie done properly: brown butter, dark brown sugar and no leavening at all, so the middle stays dense and fudgy and the top cracks like a brownie. White chocolate is optional; the butterscotch is not.

45 min prep and cooking plus time for cooling completely, which the recipe does not time at least 45 min start to finish Serves 16 servings Easy
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Brown Butter Blondies

Photograph credit: Carob Chunk Caramel Blondies (3794551134) by Janet Hudson · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Storing and Planning Ahead

Airtight at room temperature for 5 days. They improve on day two as the butterscotch deepens. Freeze cut squares for 3 months.

Brown Butter Blondies: The Method

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  1. Melt the butter in a light-coloured pan over medium heat and keep cooking, swirling, for 5 to 6 minutes until the foam subsides and the solids at the bottom turn hazelnut brown and smell nutty.

  2. Pour it into a large bowl, scraping in every brown fleck, and whisk in the brown sugar. Leave 10 minutes to cool to warm — hot butter will scramble the eggs.

  3. Whisk in the eggs, the extra yolk and the vanilla, then keep whisking hard for a full 2 minutes. The batter will go from grainy to thick, glossy and ribbon-forming. This is the crackly top.

  4. Fold in the flour and salt with a spatula until just combined, then fold in the white chocolate.

  5. Scrape into a lined 20 x 20 cm tin and level the top.

  6. Bake at 175°C / 350°F for 24 to 27 minutes. The edges should be set and the centre should still wobble very slightly — a skewer comes out with moist crumbs, not clean.

  7. Scatter with flaky salt and cool completely in the tin before cutting. Cutting warm blondies gives you sixteen pieces of pudding.

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Worth Knowing

  • A stainless or light pan for the butter, never black non-stick: you cannot see the colour change in a dark pan and burnt butter is bitter.
  • Underbake rather than overbake. They firm up considerably as they cool.
  • Line the tin with an overhang of paper and lift the whole slab out to cut. Cutting in the tin tears the edges.

Some Background

Browning the butter drives off its water and toasts the milk solids, which is where the butterscotch flavour comes from — and losing that water is also why the crumb stays dense. There is no raising agent here on purpose: leavening makes a blondie cakey, which is the most common way the recipe goes wrong. The crackly top is a thin meringue, formed when sugar dissolves fully into warm butter and egg, so beating after the eggs go in is doing real work.

Good Alongside

Vanilla ice cream and warm salted caramel · Espresso · A glass of cold milk

Brown Butter Blondies FAQ

How long does Brown Butter Blondies take to make?

20 minutes of preparation and 25 minutes of cooking, so at least 45 minutes. The method also needs time for cooling completely, which it does not time, so treat that as a minimum. The recipe serves 16.

What's in a Serving

Per serving, calculated from the ingredient list with USDA FoodData Central figures (SR Legacy). A calculation, not a laboratory analysis: brands, cuts and how you measure change the real numbers. Garnishes, greasing and other items with no amount are not counted. How the figures are worked out.

279Calories
3gProtein
33gCarbs
15gFat
0gFibre
24gSugar
170mgSodium

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Compiled by Turab

Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.

First published ; last changed .