recipe: blondies

You know the final scene in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly when the Ugly yells, "Hey, Blooondieeeeee!!!!" as Clint Eastwood rides off on his horse? For the two days that these blondies were in my house, every time I looked at one, my internal dialogue yelled, "Blooondieeeeee!!!!"

This is another recipe from the good folks at the America's Test Kitchen empire. Last weekend I renewed the Cook's Illustrated cookbook that I had checked out from the library, and I tried another dessert recipe from the book.

I made blondies -- they're shaped like brownies, but the brown sugar gives them the flavor of a chocolate chip cookie. I picked this recipe because I didn't have a lot of motivation for baking Saturday, and this was a straight-forward recipe. (That can't be said for all ATK recipes ... sometimes they get complicated.)

I served some of these guys Saturday night for dessert when Camille and Matt came over for dinner, and I brought the rest to Ben and Mandy's house for the Super Bowl. And if I may be cliche, these guys scored a touchdown! At least the cookies won, even if the 49ers didn't.

Blondies

Via Cook's Illustrated Cookbook

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups light brown sugar
• 12 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 cup walnuts (or pecans), toasted and chopped coarse
• 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup white chocolate chips

Mix flour, baking powder and salt in a medium owl.

In a large bowl, whisk brown sugar and butter. Whisk in eggs and vanilla.

Fold dry ingredients into wet ingredients until just combined. Be careful not to overmix.

Fold in nuts and chocolate chips.

Grease and flour a 9-by-13-inch pan. (Original recipe wants you to make a "foil sling," but that's never worked out for me.)

Scrape batter into prepared pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. Top will be shiny and starting to firm up when it's done. Let cool completely in the pan on a wire rack.