Swirled Peanut Butter Blondies

“Didn’t you already make peanut butter blondies?” you might ask. Why, yes… yes, I did. But I forgot about that until I’d already started melting the butter for these, and figured that you can never have too many peanut butter blondie recipes, so I proceeded on.

These blondies are slightly different from my previous recipe– you melt the butter and sugar instead of creaming it, there’s a bit less butter and sugar, and it doesn’t need the extra egg yolk. Plus there’s the added bonus of a peanut butter swirl right through the middle, which– come on– can only be a good thing!

I underbaked these, which made them very soft at room temperature but amazing when frozen, so I highly recommend that you do the same. And be generous with the sprinkling of salt on top– it really pops.

Apple Pie Blondies

It’s fall! And fall means apple picking. And apple picking means a huge bag of apples that looks manageable at first but rapidly starts seeming insurmountable. What is one to do? Well, you can always make these!

These apple pie blondies are perfect for fall– they’re rich and sweet, with added texture and tartness from the apples and a crunchy cinnamon-sugar top that crackles with every bite. Less fruity than cobbler but chewier than cake, they’re perfect eaten out of hand but would also be amazing served warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. And they stay moist for days, which makes them great for lunchboxes or just having around the house to snack on.

Peanut Butter Blondies

Yup, it’s another peanut butter-chocolate recipe. And another Smitten Kitchen recipe, to boot. But these peanut butter blondies are easy to make, extremely tasty, and just as good frozen as they are fresh, so I’m not going to worry too much about repetitiveness or derivativeness (is that even a word?).

This recipe makes a full 9×13″ pan of ganache-topped peanut butter blondies, studded with chocolate chips and with just enough peanut butter flavor to hit your tastebuds without being overwhelming. They’re rich but addictive.

The texture is great, too, though I will note that many of the reviewers of the original recipe found the baking time to be too long, resulting in dry blondies. I baked mine just until a toothpick emerged with tons of moist crumbs, and also found the edges too dry for my taste– this may have been due to the fact that I used a glass pan, which retains heat better than metal pans and which will basically keep the cooking process going even after the pan is removed from the oven. If you’re using a glass pan, I would recommend taking the blondies out of the oven after 30-35 minutes. If you’re using a metal pan, 35-40 should be fine.

Miso Macadamia Blondies

I decided the other night to make a quick batch of treats to share with some coworkers– the only criteria were that they had to be relatively fast to make (no chilling of dough or softening of butter) couldn’t require any ingredients I didn’t already have on hand, and had to be transportable (nothing too crumbly or decorated). I did a quick review of my pantry and fridge, and saw that I had a bunch of leftover shiro miso and a small can of macadamia nuts that my parents had brought me from a Hawaiian trip. Those sounded like they’d go well together, right? I figured a bar cookie or brownie would satisfy the “transportable” requirement, so I started with that.

A few Google searches later and I’d found a recipe for miso blondies from FixFeastFlair, which just so happened to call for macadamia nuts for crunch. It also called for butterscotch chips, but I figured that the white chocolate in my pantry would substitute nicely. I know that I’ve made miso blondies before, but those were deliberately cakier and less sweet so they’d go well with my dessert poutine. These were different.

Snickerdoodle Blondies

These Snickerdoodle Blondies are basically like crack. Not that I’ve ever tried crack. Hmm, perhaps I’d better find a better analogy. The White Witch’s enchanted Turkish delight? (which, by the way, I will never make for Reader’s Digest(ibles) because I don’t like it) The lotus from the Land of the Lotus-Eaters? Anyone? Or perhaps I should just say that they’re like the butteriest, chewiest, most delicious sugar cookie in the world, kissed with cinnamon, redolent with vanilla, and utterly irresistible. Because they are.

Suffice it to say that these are good. Incredibly good. Addictively good. And they’re made from the most basic of pantry ingredients. Honestly, if I could figure out a way to make these without softening and creaming butter (which requires a mixer) I’d probably make them on a weekly basis and clog up my arteries with buttery goodness. Perhaps luckily for me, I do need a mixer (though don’t think I haven’t considered trying a different technique), so I only make these when I feel that there are deserving people around to eat them. Or when I need a last-minute treat to bring somewhere and haven’t shopped for specialty ingredients.

Dessert Poutine with Miso

Recently my husband and I took part in a little friendly competition with a few other couples for a mutual friend’s birthday, which involved her naming an ingredient and the rest of us coming up with dishes incorporating the ingredient, to bring to her birthday dinner. She selected miso, which was a brilliant idea, as miso can be used in so many applications, sweet and savory. Some of the contributions that evening included miso-marinated steak, miso-caramel ice cream, and miso-pork stuffed steamed buns. Delicious!

But how does this relate to poutine, you ask? Well, for reasons left unexplained, bonus points were awarded for Canadian-themed dishes, and what’s more stereotypically Canadian than poutine?