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madbakerThis week's bonus Resolution Recipe: Brown-Butter Blondies with Caramel Almonds.
Blondie layer:
1 c unsalted butter (2 sticks)
1 3/4 c dark brown sugar
2 large eggses, at room temperature
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
3/4 tsp salt
Almond layer:
3 c sliced almonds
1/2 c butter (1 stick), cut in cubes
1/2 clight brown sugar (I only ever use dark brown sugar. Otherwise, why bother?)
1/4 c honey
1/3 c heavy cream
Heat oven to 350. Spray an 8" baking pan with grease and flour. In a skillet over medium heat, melt butter. Continue cooking until butter is a brown-gold and smells like hazelnuts, around 5 minutes. Pour the brown butter into a heatproof bowl and let it cool to room temperature, about 20 minutes.
Use an electric mixer to beat the butter with brown sugar until well combined. Beat in eggses and vanilla. Continue beating until smooth. Use a rubber spatula to fold in salt and flour; do not overmix. Transfer the batter to the baking pan and bake until the middle is no longer liquid, about 20 minutes.
Prepare the almonds: toast almonds on a baking sheet until just starting to turn golden, about 5 minutes. In a heavy saucepan over medium-high heat, combine butter, sugar, honey, and cream. Cook without stirring until it reaches 116 on a candy thermometer or comes to a boil, about 7 minutes. Add the nuts carefully (it may splatter) and stir to coat. Remove from heat.
Immediately cover the blondie layer with an even layer of caramel almonds. Bake 10 minutes more and let cool to room temperature before serving.
What worked: The flavor of the brown butter blondie was good, as was the contrast with the crunchy caramel almond topping layer.
What didn't: While the center was no longer liquid, it wasn't anywhere close to fully baked. I started pouring the caramel almonds on it to spread, and the weight collapsed the center, pushing the base up the sides. This made the bottom layer severely uneven (one middle piece was almost entirely almond). Also, it never fully cooked: some of the sides were crunchy and some were mostly baked, but the half comprising the middle square (and some of the sides) was still squishy, the texture of raw cookie dough.
Will I make it again? I personally wouldn't bother as there were a few failures here and I vastly prefer brownies to blondies. The wife quite liked it though, so I will try it again - cooking the base layer for 20-30 minutes, and making sure the toaster oven rack is in the middle rather than the bottom.
Blondie layer:
1 c unsalted butter (2 sticks)
1 3/4 c dark brown sugar
2 large eggses, at room temperature
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
3/4 tsp salt
Almond layer:
3 c sliced almonds
1/2 c butter (1 stick), cut in cubes
1/2 c
1/4 c honey
1/3 c heavy cream
Heat oven to 350. Spray an 8" baking pan with grease and flour. In a skillet over medium heat, melt butter. Continue cooking until butter is a brown-gold and smells like hazelnuts, around 5 minutes. Pour the brown butter into a heatproof bowl and let it cool to room temperature, about 20 minutes.
Use an electric mixer to beat the butter with brown sugar until well combined. Beat in eggses and vanilla. Continue beating until smooth. Use a rubber spatula to fold in salt and flour; do not overmix. Transfer the batter to the baking pan and bake until the middle is no longer liquid, about 20 minutes.
Prepare the almonds: toast almonds on a baking sheet until just starting to turn golden, about 5 minutes. In a heavy saucepan over medium-high heat, combine butter, sugar, honey, and cream. Cook without stirring until it reaches 116 on a candy thermometer or comes to a boil, about 7 minutes. Add the nuts carefully (it may splatter) and stir to coat. Remove from heat.
Immediately cover the blondie layer with an even layer of caramel almonds. Bake 10 minutes more and let cool to room temperature before serving.
What worked: The flavor of the brown butter blondie was good, as was the contrast with the crunchy caramel almond topping layer.
What didn't: While the center was no longer liquid, it wasn't anywhere close to fully baked. I started pouring the caramel almonds on it to spread, and the weight collapsed the center, pushing the base up the sides. This made the bottom layer severely uneven (one middle piece was almost entirely almond). Also, it never fully cooked: some of the sides were crunchy and some were mostly baked, but the half comprising the middle square (and some of the sides) was still squishy, the texture of raw cookie dough.
Will I make it again? I personally wouldn't bother as there were a few failures here and I vastly prefer brownies to blondies. The wife quite liked it though, so I will try it again - cooking the base layer for 20-30 minutes, and making sure the toaster oven rack is in the middle rather than the bottom.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-07 10:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-08 03:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-08 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-09 06:39 pm (UTC)What I did differently:
* I had only 1.75 cups of brown sugar left in the house. Therefore I set aside 1/3 cup of that for the topping, and used the rest for the base.
* having reduced the sugar of the toping by the difference between 1/2 and 1/3, I increased the cream of the toping from 1/3 to 1/2 cup.
* I had no sliced almonds, so I experimented to see what happens if one tries running them through the thin slicing blade on my food processor. Verdict: a mix of chopped almonds and almond meal. Used it. It was fine.
* Choose not to toast the almonds because I actually prefer raw almonds and lightly baked almonds to toasted ones. Was happy with the end result.
* Forgot to flour the pan after buttering it. This meant that I could see the layers clearly as it baked, which was pretty. I had no problems removing them from the pan after baking and cooling. Will skip the flour again.
* Accidently brought the cream/butter/sugar/honey to a full boil, having taken advantage of the "do not stir" instruction to do some washing up. Noticed very soon after it reached a full boil, so moved it to the other side of the stove and waited another couple of minutes till the bottom layer looked baked enough to support topping.
* Just before taking the bottom layer out I put the pot back on the still slightly warm burner and stirred the a bit to let it warm back up a little. Then mixed in the almonds.
* Poured the topping around the outer edges of the pan, rather than the middle, then it mostly oozed itself to fill the middle, too, with very little spreading on my part to even it out before finishing baking.
* Pulled it out of the oven at exactly 10 minutes further baking, when the edges of the caramel toping had taken on a dark gold colour and changed texture with respect to the middle, in hopes that the middle would have the cookie-dough texture you described. It did! (and I was very happy with it).
Looking at how thick these were, I believe that, if one actually wants the bottoms to bake through to the middle, it would make sense to bake it in a 13 x 9" pan rather than an 8". Then you'd have only about 1cm each of each layer and it would bake more uniformly.
I have now packed most of them into the freezer (wrapped in baking paper, so I can separate them later), because I do not need to eat this much sugar per serving again any time in the next week or three. (but I confess to having eaten all of the batter and topping that remained in the bowl/pot, plus one corer piece as soon as it was cool enough to cut and still hold together, and one middle piece as I was packaging them up, because butter, cream, and almonds are pretty much at the top of my Yum! list)
no subject
Date: 2020-12-09 07:00 pm (UTC)We served ours for a homeowners' meeting so there were four of us, and we nibbled on it with tea for about a week - we also did not need much sugar at a time.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-09 07:22 pm (UTC)