Chocolate Chip and Walnut Blondies
Don’t ask me what took so long for me to jump on the Blondie bandwagon. But here I am, boots on, and not about to get off anytime soon.
I don’t know where I saw something about Blondies recently that caught my attention. Pinterest, probably. I’ve been spending way too much time there lately, but isn’t it fun? It feels like flipping through a magazine, something I never do anymore. So I went in search of a Blondie recipe and found Mark Bittman’s on Smitten Kitchen website, and as y’all know, a Mark Bittman recipe is pretty much foolproof, so my search began and ended right then and there.
And they were, as I expected them to be, perfect. Like your favorite chocolate chip cookie, but super-gooey and all brownie-like. And like your favorite brownie recipe, these take about 5 minutes to put together and throw in the oven.
Also brownie–esque in that they’re meant to be ever-so-slightly undercooked. Moist and warm, a few of these babies would pair up quite nicely with a scoop or two of vanilla bean ice cream, now wouldn’t they?
Chocolate Chip and Walnut Blondies
Makes 36 bite-size blondies
Inspired by a Mark Bittman recipe found on the Smitten Kitchen website.
Know that the original recipe is the blondie itself, sans chocolate or nuts. I added the chocolate chips and toasted walnuts and amped up the salt (adding 1/2 teaspoon of sea salt to the recipe and a dusting of fleur de sel on top before I baked them). Reason I did this was when I tasted the batter it didn’t move me. It seemed a little flat. I figured the added punch of salt, just a little, would make everything taste more like it should — which it did.
Note, too, that I used cassonade sugar instead of brown sugar, which the recipe called for. You may use whatever’s easiest to get your hands on.
- ½ teaspoon of sea salt
- 1 cup/125 grams of flour
- 1 stick/125 grams of butter, melted
- 1 cup/145 grams of cassonade (known as demerara sugar in the U.S.) or brown sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla
- 1 cup/240 grams of chocolate chips
- 1 cup/125 grams of walnuts, toasted then roughly chopped
- fleur de sel
1. Line an 8 x 8 pan with parchment or foil and preheat the oven to 350°/180 °C.
2. In a small bowl, whisk together the sea salt and flour. Set this aside.
3. Put the melted butter and cassonade or brown sugar in your mixer and combine. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until the color changes to light yellow. Give this a few minutes on high.
4. Add the flour-sea salt and mix gently. Ditto with the chocolate chips and walnuts. Pour into the pan and slide into the oven. Bake for 25 to 35 minutes or until the edges brown. Be sure not to overcook this and err on the side of under rather than overcooked. Gooey is gooooood. Serve right away.
