Maple-Nut Blondies

I love brownies. And that might be an understatement. Even if I know a brownie is made from a bunch of not-so-good-for-me things, I can’t turn it down. I’m weak. So weak. So, in order to keep myself on the straight and narrow, I try to make GOOD, WHOLESOME brownies for me to eat at home…so far, it’s not working. I still can’t say no to a brownie.

Oh wait. I lie. You know those brownies they sell in the box with the icing on top and the multi-colored sprinkles? Yeah – I can say no to those. Ick. No thanks. They’re a disgrace to the word “brownie.” Blech.

So, today we’re talking blondies – which is just another word for brownies without the brown. That’s why they’re called BLONDies. Genius, huh? While I like the bar cookies with chocolate best, I still really love blondies and so does Barry. Oh wait…I’m not blonde. Barry likes chocolate brownies best – yep he sure does.

Sometimes Barry and I have deep discussions about brownies… and at the end of those discussions, I am always right. Because I’m the cook. And because I’m the wife. And because Barry enjoys sleeping in the bed and not on the couch.

Today in Cooking Through Stacy’s Stash, we are tackling one of my favorite cookbooks of all time. I pined after this cookbook for the longest time…I would visit it at my library and rub it lovingly. Is that weird? Yeah, well. I saved up my Swagbucks and finally bought it. 🙂

The King Arthur Whole Grain Baking cookbook is about $23. I am cheap. I still think it’s worth it. I love looking through all the pages. It has a section for pictures instead of pictures with each recipe. While that’s not my total favorite way, at least it has photos. I love cookbooks with photos. I would love to try every single recipe, so I had a hard time choosing which one we would “healthify.”

I finally settled on Butter-Nut Blondies. I renamed them after a few recipe switches. Since this is already a whole grain cookbook, there weren’t many changes to be made…so I just sorta made it Stacyfied instead.

This recipe called for butter-rum flavoring. I don’t keep that in my pantry. I do keep maple flavoring though and so I just changed it out for that and renamed it Maple Nut Blondies. I love the taste of maple anything, so this dessert was right up my alley.

Also, this recipe calls for apple cider vinegar. I thought you might want to know why. The vinegar reacts with a few of the ingredients causing it to raise – makes it fluffier and lighter in texture.

The only changes I made were to switch to sucanat instead of brown sugar and not use as much sugar, use maple flavoring instead of butter-rum, and I added chocolate chips. Because really…all bar cookies need chocolate chips. Amen.

This makes a 9×13 inch pan full of blondies. But they won’t last long at all. Also, please remember to NEVER over-bake your bar cookies…because they get dry as dust. Then the only way to fix them is to slather them down with ice cream – on second thought, overbake those brownies.

Verdict? Once again, another awesome make-over! I knew King Arthur wouldn’t let me down. He’s very faithful, like an old dog (in a good way).