White Chocolate Chip Almond Blondies

 

 

My husband is worth his weight in gold when it comes to his computer fix-it skills. My laptop has been slowly heading downhill for the past few months.  She was sloooooow like the molasses in these ginger cookies.  (Vintage photos, but our favorite cookie, hands down.) A complete stress inducer.  Enter my tech-saavy husband, who reinstalled and cleaned out the entire thing for me. That, my friends, calls for some cheeky "I love yous" and celebratory blondies.

 

But in true Sarah fashion, I ate most of these in his honor.  Then I grouched at him for eating the pretty ones I had hidden in the cupboard to photograph. (Typical blogger.)  These blondies are modified from a Food Network Kitchens recipe I printed out back in 2001 but have yet to try. Better now than never :)

 

Ingredients:

3/4 cup unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks)

1 1/2 cups light brown sugar

2 large eggs, beaten

3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/4 cup almond meal

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp fine salt

1 cup sliced almonds

1/2 cup white chocolate chips

 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare a 9x9 inch square pan by coating it in cooking spray. I added a strip of parchment paper (the width of my pan) and sprayed that as well, to allow me to easily remove the bars from the pan once cooked. 

 

Melt the butter over low heat and then set aside. Put the brown sugar into a stand mixer and add the melted butter.  Allow to come to room temperature. While you are waiting, whisk the following dry ingredients together in a medium sized bowl: almond meal, flour, baking powder, and salt. Once the butter/sugar mixtures is cooled, turn the mixer on low and beat in eggs, one at a time, and the vanilla.

 

With the mixer on low again, add large spoonfuls of your flour mixture to the wet ingredients until the batter forms. Add 1/2 cup sliced almonds and the white chocolate chips and stir to distribute.  Transfer the batter into your prepared pan, top with the remaining 1/2 almonds, and bake 60-70 minutes or until the edges are browned and a toothpick comes out clean. (If your blondies are browning too quickly, you can loosely set a piece of tinfoil over the pan to avoid the top getting too dark.)

 

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My modifications:

 The original instructions called for a 9x13 inch pan, and then they instructed the user to bake the blondies for 20-30 minutes.  I like my bars thick so I used a smaller pan. I'm also playing around with almond meal, so I substituted 1 1/4 cups of it for all purpose flour, which made for a very moist bar. I added the sliced almonds and white chocolate chips for flavor.  But since my baking time was increased, the white chocolate chips melted in the batter while they baked...ah-mazing!