White Chocolate Blondies
How to make the BEST Browned Butter White Chocolate Blondie Bars
Blondies Recipe
I have a serious love affair with browned butter.
It started in 2003 when I was experimenting with using hot and cold butter in my cookies, instead of the typical room temperature butter. I fell in love with the depth of flavor that it gave baked goods. Let us not forget about the caramel notes it gives cookies as well. Huge browned butter fan here! Who is with me?
These Browned Butter White Chocolate Blondies are the bomb. I don’t even know why that is coming out of my mouth but they are that good.
What is a blondie? It’s basically the first cousin to both brownies and chocolate chip cookies. That is the relative jackpot, if you ask me!
The beauty of White Chocolate Blondie Bars are they are similar to cookies but easier. We love easy! The dough is poured into a pan, baked and then cut into squares.
I played around with this Blondies recipe I found in America’s Test Kitchen Cookbook. It is the cookbook I reach for the most because of the amount of time they spend researching and experimenting with their recipes. I have mad respect for their methods! I would like to be like them, with their professional kitchens and paid dishwashers. I would LOVE someone to wash my dishes! Can you even imagine? Pure heaven. I digress.
How to make the BEST Blondies Recipe:
- Brown the Butter. There is a technique to this method. You want to give the butter time to deepen but not so long that the water evaporates out of the butter. I found that constantly swirling the pan helps the butter to brown nicely. It is not something you want to walk away from. It’s serious business and needs to be watched closely. It will only take 3-4 minutes on medium heat.
- After you remove the butter from the heat, immediately add the brown sugar. You want it to be nice and hot so that when you add the brown sugar it dissolves nicely and becomes glossy. I usually stir it for 1-2 minutes to ensure that the sugar is dissolved.
- Chill it, baby. Don’t think you can skip this step! You will end up with scrambled eggs and melted white chocolate. No bueno. Let it chill in the fridge and while you are waiting, like your friend’s photos on Instagram. Tell them how amazing they are. People like that.
- When you know without a shadow of a doubt that your butter-sugar mixture is chilled enough, add those eggs and vanilla.
- You can add white chocolate, pecans, chocolate chips, walnuts, M & M’s, or whatever your heart desires.
- Bake until edges are golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean. These tend to be slightly gooey in the center with crispy edges. You don’t want to overbake them so the edges are too hard.
- Let the blondies cool to room temperature before cutting. Place in the freezer if you are in a hurry. These blondies are so much easier to cut when they aren’t hot. Let them cool.
- 12 Tablespoons Butter 1 1/2 sticks, melted and cooled
- 1 1/2 cups Brown Sugar
- 2 Eggs
- 2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract
- 1 1/2 cups Flour
- 1 teaspoon Baking Powder
- 1/2 teaspoon Salt
- 2/3 cup White Chocolate Chips
- 2/3 cup Pecans optional
- Heat oven to 350 degrees.
- In a medium saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. As it starts to heat up, swirl the pan around often. Once it starts to bubble, let it deepen for 3-4 minutes.
- Remove from heat and add brown sugar. Stir it for 1-2 minutes until the mixture is nice and glossy and all of the brown sugar is dissolved into the butter.
- Let cool. It can be cooled at room temperature or can be put into the refrigerator for 10-15 minutes. It needs to be cooled to room temperature before adding the eggs. You don't want scrambled eggs!
- Add eggs and vanilla and stir well.
- Stir in flour, baking powder, and salt.
- Before adding white chocolate chips, ensure the dough is chilled enough. You may want to put it in the refrigerator for a few minutes before adding white chocolate.
- Stir in white chocolate chips and optional pecans.
- Optional: Line a 8 x 8, 9 x 9, or 9 x 13 pan with foil or parchment paper.
- Pour batter into pan of choice, smoothing top with a spatula.
- Bake until top is shiny and slightly cracked approximately 20-24 minutes.
- Let cool and cut into bars.
I am predicting that you will without a doubt LOVE these Browned Butter White Chocolate Blondies. Share the love with your friends and fam on Pinterest because people love themselves some baked goods.
Happy Baking! xo
Hey, Melissa! Great recipe- if we use an 8×8, would you say baking time is closer to 24 mins whereas if we use a 9×13, baking time is closer to 20? What size dish did you use?
Thanks,
Tricia
Hi Tricia! You are exactly right! That is such a great question. I used a 8 x 8 pan to bake mine and I cooked mine for 24 minutes. A 9 x 13 pan would be 20 minutes. I always set my timer for a few minutes before since oven temperatures vary. I hope that helps! Let me know how they turn out! 🙂
I doubled this recipe and used 2 9 x 13 pans parchment paper lined. I substituted half of white chocolate chips with 2/3 cup of caramel chips and substituted unsweetened coconut flakes for half of the pecans. The only issue I had was cooking time. It took 30 minutes but no biggie.. just had to check it till it looked right. They were a delicious hit! Sweet and salty, moist and chewy. Thank you!
These are amazing. I’d been looking for a recipe that works well with whole wheat flour and coconut sugar (I add ~ teaspoon of honey). I subbed 1:1 on both — so delicious! (A little more stirring to dissolve the coconut sugar.) These are going to be my go-to holiday cookie bar. Thank you so much!
Should we use unsalted or salted butter?
I made these tonight and put cut up dried mangoes and white chocolate chips in them. They were a hit! I had several people all for the recipe.
You are so right because I too now have a love affair with browned butter. My only regret is that I did not double the recipe. It was a large family dinner, so no leftovers☹️ They weren’t too rich, and everyone raved about them. The white chocolate was noticeable, but not overpowering to take away from the buttery goodness of the bar I left out the pecans and added caramel chips. Two very enthusiastic thumbs up!!
I love these! I followed the recipe exactly except adding in come caramel bits instead of pecans. Super yummy! The caramel might make them a tad to sweet for some, so maybe don’t do that if you don’t prefer super sweet, but i LOVE them. I baked mine in an 8×8 pan for 28 min and they’re still on the tad gooey side. But i really really love these.
I am baking these tomorrow, and I’m very excited! I’m going to do mostly chopped white chocolate, with about 1/3 chocolate chips mixed in. I like pecans, but my niece might not, and these are for her birthday, so I will ask and maybe leave those out. Thanks for sharing!
These are so good! I added some coconut flakes, chopped pecans and some semisweet chocolate chunks, and replaced the vanilla extract with Cognac and added an extra teaspoon. I did mess up at one point, but it all ended up great. My brown sugar wasn’t melting after I added it to the brown butter, so I had the bright idea to heat up the mixture until the sugar dissolved. Just a minute or two… but I accidentally did something to the sugar to the point that when it was cooled down (which took more like 30 minutes in the fridge, not 10-15), the mixture was rock hard. So I wrapped a mallet in wax paper and pounded the candy down into a slide, but it wasn’t totally homogeneous. There were small bits of what I’m going to generously call “toffee” in the mixture by the time I decided to stop pounding it and just go ahead with the recipe. I actually like them a lot! But if you don’t want the extra work (or if you don’t like toffee!) I would recommend that you just not worry if the sugar doesn’t dissolve completely in the brown butter. Thanks!
Okay, so I made these again today, and modified a bit more. I felt like the batter itself could have been less sweet, since you’re adding the chocolate. So I replaced 1/3 of the butter, and 1/2 of the sugar with 1 1/4 cups pumpkin, and I added some spice blend, and it worked beautifully! I had to bake it a little less because of the pumpkin, but only by about 2-3 minutes. Lovely!
I made these with white chocolate chips and pecans. Everyone loved them. Even my coworker said it’s her favourite dessert I’ve made and she doesn’t even like dessert! Anyways, I love them and am making my second batch as we speak but with walnuts, white and dark chocolate. Hope it’s just as good the second too me around. Thanks for the recipe.
Can I use walnuts
I browned butter and put in the brown sugar after taking it off heat and the sugar wouldn’t melt into the butter? Am I doing something wrong?
I’m fixing the receipt now….not all the butter dissolved into the sugar. Do I continue with the rest of the recipe?
Thoughts, comments?
The butter didn’t fully dissolve the brown sugar… what did I do wrong??
im having the same problem and it looks like most of the comments above are too.. i add a splash of water back into it when its grainy to get it to melt… im thinking that my butter was cooked too long or too high and too much of the water in the butter evaporated.
these are great ! my only problem is for some reason when i melt the butter and add the brown sugar my mixture is always grainy and never properly melts… i always have to add a splash of water to get it to do so…any pointers??