I’ve never been a huge fan of chocolate. Sure I’ll take the odd piece from grand Swiss or French choclatiers and love a cocoa-laced red velvet cake at holiday but other flavours are more apt to tempt me. Vanilla for example. Or butterscotch.
When the mood strikes for something like a brownie in texture and sweetness around tea time, I usually aim for a chocolate-less version, also known as a “blondie”. Their recipes are usually even easier since there’s no wrangling double boilers or shaving chocolate involved and is little more than stirring together the right ratio of sugar, egg, and flour to come up with a fairly thick batter. I’m far from the first to this recipe party and you can find all manner of additions in the countless permutations that litter the internet. Nuts to dried berries, cream cheese to peanut butter. And yes, some people even add in chocolate chips which sort of defeats the purpose in my mind but to each their own.
All those exotic additions, at least at my local grocery prices, can really add up to an expensive pan of treats for a quick afternoon teatime. I always have cheap peanuts in my pantry so they’re an easy choice after a quick toasting in a dry pan to refresh them. Along side those I thought I’d try my hand at making some DIY butterscotch chips to fold into the mix. Why pay $4 for a bag of the ready made when I already know how to make butterscotch with a buck’s worth of sugar and butter? More importantly, when I make my own butterscotch I can cook it longer to get a richer flavour and sometimes even brown a portion of the butter at the start to really ramp up the taste. The only trick is to use coconut oil so they’re ever so slightly more solid after cooling. No where near the waxy bagged versions but they don’t need to be when they’re about to be baked into submission inside a blondie. They only have to hold together long enough to get them mixed into the batter and slid into the oven to bake.
Blondies with Peanuts & DIY Butterscotch Bits
60 g butter, unsalted
60 g coconut oil
120 g brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
To make the butterscotch ‘bits’, melt butter, coconut oil, and brown sugar SLOWLY over medium-low heat, whisking constantly to combine well. When fully melted, remove from heat, whisk in vanilla, and pour into a parchment-lined nine-inch square pan to make a very shallow depth. Put in the freezer to cool and harden, about an hour. Note that once pulled from the freezer the mixture may or may not stay solid very long depending on your coconut oil so leave them chilling until just before adding them to the batter below.
75 g peanuts
120 g butter, unsalted, melted
100 g sugar
1 large egg from a happy chicken
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
150 g all-purpose flour
170 g ‘butterscotch bits’ (from above)
Yield: One nine-inch pan cut into any size squares you prefer
Toast the peanuts in a dry pan over medium heat until fragrant, about two minutes. Remove from heat, chop coarsely, and set aside to cool. Preheat oven to 175C (350F).
Just before mixing the batter and using the parchment sling, remove the hardened butterscotch bits made above to a cutting board and chop coarsely into approximately 1/4″ pieces. Clever bakers will reuse the parchment sling and pan for the next step.
Whisk together butter and sugar until well combined. Whisk in egg and vanilla. Add flour, salt, and baking powder and fold together with a wide spatula until just mixed. Gently stir in the peanuts and butterscotch bits. Spread evenly into the bottom of a parchment-lined nine-inch pan. Bake for 25-30 minutes until the edges just begin to brown and the top is golden. A skewer or knife inserted should come out clean of any crumbs.
Remove from the pan and place on a cooling rack for AT LEAST forty minutes before cutting as desired into serving sizes. Try any sooner and the blondies will fall apart thanks to the overheated butterscotch. Use the time to make a stout pot of tea. These are sweet enough to stand up to it.
