Brown-butter toffee blondies

The addition of smashed up slabs of toffee and chopped walnuts add a crunchy but oh- so-chewy texture when you bite in to each piece.

These blondie bites are one of my wife’s favourite desserts that I make about once every six months for her. I’ve also distributed these bites amongst colleagues when I have been working on-site with a client.

When you serve these toffee blondies you can either cut them larger (100mm/4″ squares) in size as an individual serving or bite-sized about 40mm square. Either way, the obligatory glass of cold milk should be included.

I find the blondies more than sweet enough as-is, but if you have a very sweet tooth, or you just like the look of the dust treats, a light dusting of confectioner’s sugar adds a nice touch.

Brown-butter toffee blondies
Servings
12 pieces
Cook Time
25-40 minutes
Servings
12 pieces
Cook Time
25-40 minutes
Brown-butter toffee blondies
Servings
12 pieces
Cook Time
25-40 minutes
Servings
12 pieces
Cook Time
25-40 minutes
Ingredients
Servings: pieces
Units:
Instructions
Prep
  1. Pre-heat oven to 176C/350F
  2. Butter a 22cm-by-33cm (9"-by-13") baking pan.
  3. Line the bottom of the buttered baking pan with parchment paper
  4. Butter the face-up side of the parchment paper
  5. Sprinkle one tablespoon of flour over the buttered parchment paper to prevent sticking and aid with browning
Melting
  1. Put a saucepan (wide, shallow preferred) over a medium heat on the stove
  2. Cook the butter in the saucepan until it turns golden brown. You know it is cooked as it will smell nutty.
  3. Remove the saucepan from heat
  4. Let the butter cool in the saucepan
Mixing
  1. Chop the walnuts into small pieces with a kitchen knife
  2. Smash the toffee into small pieces with a rolling pin
  3. Place the brown sugar in to the bowl of an electric mixer
  4. Place the granulated sugar on top of the brown sugar that's in the bowl of the electric mixer
  5. Pour the filtered and now cooled brown butter over the two sugars
  6. Use the paddle attachment with the mixer on the lowest speed setting, combine the browned butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar
  7. Add the eggs to the butter/sugar mixture
  8. Use the mixer on slowest speed setting to just combine the eggs and sugars and butter
  9. Increase the speed of the mixer to medium/medium-high
  10. Mix until the butter/egg/sugar mixture becomes a light colour and is fluffy. This is usually about three minutes.
  11. Sift together the flour, the salt and the baking powder in a separate bowl. You can do this while the mixer is working on the eggs and sugar mixture.
  12. Add the vanilla to the butter/egg/sugar mixture
  13. Reduce the speed of the mixer to low
  14. Add the flour/salt/baking powder mixture to the butter/sugar/egg/vanilla mixture
  15. Add the chopped walnuts to the combined batter mixture
  16. Add the smashed toffee bits to the combined batter mixture
  17. Slowly mix everything until thoroughly combined, usually about a minute or two
  18. Pour batter mixture in to prepared baking pan
  19. Spread batter mixture in pan as uniformly as possible
Baking
  1. Bake for 28 to 40 minutes on middle/lower-middle rack.
  2. Bake until a cake tester comes out clean. Very importantly, avoid over-baking!
  3. Transfer baking pan to a wire rack to cool
  4. Once cake is thoroughly cooled, turn the cake out on to a cutting board
Serving
  1. Cut in to individual servings or small bite-sized pieces
  2. As an optional step, very lightly dust blondies with confectioner's sugar.
Recipe Notes

You can to watch the final few minutes of your cooking time like a hawk to make sure these don't overcook. It's really easy to go from "blondie" to "brownie" if you are not careful.

The problem with a little overcooking is that the bottom of the blondie gets a little extra crunchy. You can fix this by cutting the blondie cake in to bite-sized pieces and then taking a very sharp kitchen knife just trimming off 1mm of the underside of each piece to reveal the chewy inner layer.

When you are browning your butter I find a large, shallow saucepan to be a lot easier to handle than a tall, regular saucepan. The butter browns a lot quicker too.

If you have browned your butter a little too much and wound up with burnt milk solids on the bottom of the pan, you can filter out the burnt solids very easily. Using a very fine mesh strainer, such as one you would use for tea leaves, or a coffee filter, pour your browned butter through the fine mesh filter three separate times, or through the coffee filter once. Problem solved.

If your batter mixture is a little too sticky to spread easily and your parchment paper keeps sliding around, use two spatulas  or wooden spoons held in each hand and move them in a "pulling apart" motion to spread the batter mixture around.

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