Our brownie fan contest has come to an end, and the winner of a dozen brownies is Niki. She will be getting next week’s batch. For this week I made some white chocolate brownies, better known as blondies! They were a request from my girlfriend, who had never tried them before. I didn’t want to make the typical blondies I usually get at coffee shops, where it just tastes like a giant cookie bar. I wanted a rich brownie experience, but with white chocolate instead.
So to accomplish this, I started with the same brownie recipe we have been using, rather than a separate blondie recipe, but then I changed almost everything. The first batch I made was delicious, but something about the white chocolate made it completely fall apart. So I played around with the recipe a bit and got a nice, dense blondie that has a rich white chocolate flavor without just tasting like a boring white chocolate bar.
One thing I did to make them work out better is reduce the sugar; white chocolate is a lot sweeter than dark chocolate. Second, I used a little brown sugar, as all white sugar left a little something to be desired. I wanted to try using caramel instead of brown sugar, as I think that would be delicious, but I didn’t have time. If any of you try it, share your experience with us in the comments. The last big change I made was to add more flour; they just were not holding together with less. Some of you may notice there is no vanilla extract. This is because white chocolate is not really chocolate but is made of coco butter and vanilla flavoring, so there’s plenty of vanilla flavor as is.
One last thing, I found mini peanut butter cups at Trader Joe’s (no affiliation!) and thought they would be a ton of fun to add. They worked great and added a lot to the dish, but if you can’t find them, chocolate chips work wonderfully. Follow the directions below (#8-11) to best distribute the peanut butter cups and reduce the chance of chocolate melting and sticking to the bottom of the pan.
This recipe makes 16 brownies if cut into 4 rows and columns, making 2.25” x 2.25” squares.
Ingredients:
5 oz white chocolate chips
2 sticks butter
1c white sugar
½c brown sugar
4 large eggs
1½c AP flour
1 tsp salt
½ package of Trader Joe’s mini peanut butter cups, or chocolate chips.
Directions:
1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2) Grease a 9”x9” pan.
3) Melt the 5 oz of white chocolate with 2 sticks of butter and mix well.
4) Add white sugar to the chocolate mix, and stir.
5) Beat the 4 eggs with the brown sugar until frothy, about 3 minutes.
6) Slowly add the white chocolate mix to the eggs, stirring to avoid cooking the eggs.
7) Gently fold in the flour and salt.
8) Pour about ¼ of the mixture out, covering the bottom of the pan.
9) Sprinkle about ¼ of the peanut butter cups across the blondie layer.
10) Mix the rest of the peanut butter cups in with the remaining blondie mix.
11) Pour the mix in the pan and level it out.
12) Bake for about 30 minutes, until the center is mostly dry when a toothpick is inserted.
13) Let cool before trying to remove from the pan.
14) Serve and enjoy!
Wife whipped up a batch for the kids. We have them on a gluten free diet so replaced the AP flour with some gluten free flour. Came out tasting great but a lot denser then we prefer next time going to cut back on the butter.