So this year I'm an office assistant for my program, and I plan to use our building's kitchen as a baked goods repository. It allows me to try new recipes and techniques, bake to my heart's desire and not feel obligated to eat all of the finished products. Everybody wins!
I also thought I'd chronicle my adventures (and surely, over the course of the year, misadventures) in baking here. This week I chose blondies (a.k.a. butterscotch brownies) using the recipe from Mark Bittman's 10th anniversary How to Cook Everything.
A few years ago, in the weeks leading up to the day I would leave for school I suddenly had this mad craving for blondies. They're so buttery and delicious, I thought, and leaving for school I felt secure in making a pan because whatever I didn't eat could be distributed among my friends. So I made a pan in the evening, covered it in foil and left it to be cut in the morning. When I went to do that, however, I found that the blondies had been visited by the chocolate-loving mystery rodent my sister and I dubbed "The Gnawer". It was so terribly demoralizing, having built them up in my mind as satisfying my weeks-long craving only to peel back the foil and regard the little nibbles along the edges of the baking pan. So I decided to right that wrong and start out with blondies again this time around.
Mmm...butter.
Whisking the butter and brown sugar together - it's always sort of fun to use the whisk to crush sugar lumps.
Unintentional action shot! (Otherwise, my hand wouldn't be so prominent.) My camera goes to sleep when it's not being used, and I ended up trying to wake it up and mix in the egg at the same time. There's a reason the pros have their own camera operators.
This batter was an appealing gooey caramel sludge - I probably would've eaten it with a spoon if not for the raw egg.
Adding the flour and salt - I like to use coarse kosher salt because it gives a little extra kick. Admittedly, I'm a chocolate-covered pretzel fan, so your mileage may vary regarding the interplay of salt and sugar.
Lighter color, thicker batter once the flour is mixed in.
I added toffee pieces to give them something a little extra - if I make them again I'll probably add chocolate chips, or toffee pieces that have chocolate in them. The toffee is good, but a little too close to the flavor of the blondies just in and of themselves.
Getting ready for the oven!
I watched Grease 2, one of my favorite campy so-bad-it's-good movies, while baking, stashing the laptop on top of the microwave. The start of classes brought the movie's opening song ("Back to School Again") to mind. It's hard to tell here, but Michelle Pfeiffer and Maxwell Caulfield have just launched into the uber-cheesy film-concluding "We'll Be Together."
Just out of the oven. I think they might have been a bit overcooked, but I'm not really sure whether the fudge/cake dichotomy still applies when you're talking about blondies.
And the finished product, ready for distribution!
