My First Time With a Blondie

Anyone who knows me knows I love a tasty homemade baked good. Scones, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate cakes infused with Guinness — these are a few of my favorite things. The thing is, I like making treats almost as much I like consuming them. I like to believe it's because I'm a Cancer and we love food and we love to nurture, therefore, nurturing with food is like the perfect storm of deliciousness. Sick? Chicken soup with dill and parsnips, pronto! Tired? Something chocolately, quick! Cold? Some sort of cheesy carbohydrate, stat! Heartbroken? Xanax Pie! Just kidding. Ish.

Anyway, last night I was freezing and under a slew of comforters reading a great book (review to come soon!) and I could just not get tired. Eleven PM rolled around and I felt I could still turn cartwheels around my abode. The frigidity of my apartment conjured in my brain images of warm things: Hot chocolate. Fires. S'mores. I needed to bake!

Now the thing about my kitchen (and two great bakers live chez moi) is that we are always lacking one of the ingredients needed for whichever recipe we're trying to make. We're always short just one tablespoon of butter (and lord knows you can skimp on the beurre), or our eggs just expired last week, or the only milk we've got around is organic triple soy delight (this does not lend itself to the sort of decadent delicacies I desire.) But last night? Friends, we had it all. The stars had aligned, and so had our chocolate chips. I prepared to make my staple: Cookies with three types of chips — white chocolate, butterscotch and milk chocolate. But visions of swapping trays and juggling various batches of dough pained me. I wanted, if possible, to make ONE BIG COOKIE so I didn't have to scoop out five-dozen little diddies.

And then it hit me: BLONDIES! I LOVE Blondies, but I've never made them. And I've always wanted to! And they are basically one big cookie! One big, buttery brick of cookieness. By the way, I just adore biting into Blondies: the firm, sweet coolness and occasional texture of chocolate chip really does it for me. Thank you, Google Gods, and thank you, foodnetwork.com for this fabulous recipe. They turned out well (see above).

This morning, I had two of the suckers for breakfast. I figured they're basically muffins, just more square and flat.

The Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups firmly packed light brown sugar
  
• 1 cup unsalted butter [this is two sticks]
  
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon fine salt
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• About 1 1/2 cups butterscotch, semisweet chocolate, peanut butter, or white chocolate chips, optional [I used butterscotch and both white and milk chocolate chips]
  

The Directions

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Butter and flour a 9 by 13-inch glass baking dish.

Put the sugar in a large bowl. Melt the butter in a small skillet or in the microwave in a glass measuring cup. Stir the butter into the sugar until smooth, cool to room temperature.

Meanwhile, in another medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt together.

Beat the eggs and vanilla into the sugar mixture. Add the flour mixture a bit at a time and mix until a smooth thick batter forms. Fold in the chips, as desired.

Spoon the batter to the prepared dish and spread to evenly fill the dish. Bake until the blondies are light brown around the edges and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 20 to 25 minutes.

Remove from the oven and let cool slightly. Invert onto a rack and cool completely. Cut into squares and serve. Eat for breakfast, with a glass of milk.