42. Blondie

Date Cooked: November 23, 2008
Page: 813
Rating: B-

I was craving sweets and figured I haven’t really made enough desserts from the book. I’m not sure why I chose blondies but I might have thought the recipe was easy, key word ‘thought’. So the recipe started out innocently enough.

I started by toasting chopped pecans in the oven for about 10 minutes. I am beginning to find that for many recipes my oven runs on the shorter end of recommended cooking times. Once the nuts were done I set them aside to cool. Then I started to get the rest of the ingredients measured and set aside.

I am embarrassed to say that the constant consumption of store-bought cookies and treats has left me blissfully unaware of the grotesque quantities of sugar and fat that actually go into them. The recipe makes 36 two inch squares which contained 1 ½ cups of sugar and 12 tablespoons of butter. That doesn’t count all the chocolate chips. I think if people made their own desserts more we would probably all be a little healthier since we would truly see what it is that we eat. But I digress and I am certainly not the person to be talking about healthy eating habits… seriously. On a side note I went to the One-of-a-Kind Craft Show this weekend and tried some ‘Better than Biscotti’ cookies that contain no butter. Ummm lack of butter doesn’t make anything better. If you like tasteless powdery treats then these are for you. For me, I’ll stick with the butter.

If you are like me then that last paragraph probably confuses you on my stance to healthy eating. But the best advice I was ever given about eating is this. Moderation, common sense and exercise.

Back to the blondies. Once the ingredients were folded together I spread the batter into a 9x9 baking pan and baked for 22 minutes. Then I baked for 5 minutes more… then a few minutes longer. Finally I took them out thinking they would be done since I had already baked several minutes longer than recommended. Does anyone remember my chocolate chip cookie experience? This felt eerily similar. The blondies turned out extremely soft and gooey. It took along time to cool them sufficiently to remove them from the pan and I ended up having to firm them up in the fridge for awhile so I could actually cut them. I reviewed the ingredient list and I didn’t make any mistakes there so I am baffled as to why these turned out so runny.

Rating: B-. These were good but they were extremely sweet. Sweet to the point of making my teeth ache. In addition the overall fluid nature of the finished product was a bit of a disappointment. But I will make these again, maybe scaling back the butter and sugar content and upping the flour.