recipe: sourdough blondies with hazelnuts and bittersweet chocolate

Forget pie, make these for Thanksgiving. (Actually, don't forget pie. But make these, too. That's what I'm doing.)

Lately: Here are two New York Times recipes I made this week and think you all might want to try: chile-butter chicken with vinegared potatoes¹ and creamy coconut-lime rice with peanuts². … I’m in the middle of reading the second “Slow Horses” book, and this quote made me feel seen (even though it’s referring to an octogenarian as he decides whether to have a second whiskey): “If there was anything he missed about being young, it was that careless ability to fall into oblivion like a bucket dropped down a well, then pulled up slowly, replenished. One of those gifts you didn’t know you possessed until it was taken away.”

sourdough blondies with hazelnut and bittersweet chocolate

adapted from Nancy Silverton’s blondies in “The Cookie That Changed My Life”

active time: 20 minutes

total time: 1 hour, 20 minutes

In retrospect, I’m always intrigued by the recipe I pick first when I buy a new cookbook. Earlier this year, when I got my hands on Nancy Silverton’s dessert bible, I flipped through and landed on blondies — a bar cookie I generally find inferior to the brownie, not worth the time or hassle. But for whatever reason, that’s what I settled on. People are mysterious.

And the blondies were good. Really, really good. Right off the bat, I substituted hazelnuts for the walnuts Nancy calls for; I don’t like walnuts, which means there were none in my freezer. Having never made the walnut version, I shouldn’t authoritatively say these are better, but … they’re better.

This adaptation goes beyond just a nut switch, though. It’s cut down for a smaller pan, because these things are so rich, and there’s no way I won’t finish them all if they’re sitting on my counter. I also incorporated sourdough discard, in part because I wanted a bit more of a savory tang, and in part because I’m always searching for things to do with my discard. Those changes and a few others yielded a gooey, rich, caramelized, ever so slightly savory bar cookie that is, I swear, just as good as the best brownies. (Except Ina’s. These aren’t as good as Ina’s.)

Ingredients:

• 150 grams raw, unsalted hazelnuts³

• 3 sticks (339 grams) unsalted butter

• 325 g dark brown sugar

• 115 g granulated sugar

• 2 large eggs

• 1 tablespoon vanilla bean paste⁴

• 113 g sourdough discard (unfed)

• 270 g all purpose flour

• 1 tsp diamond crystal kosher salt

• 1/4 tsp baking soda

• 80 g bittersweet chocolate chips⁵

• flaky sea salt⁶

Instructions:

1. Place a rack in the center of your oven, and heat the oven to 325 degrees. Place the hazelnuts on a baking sheet.

2. While the oven heats, melt the the butter and brown it⁷ in a light-bottomed saucepan over medium heat, paying close attention. The butter will begin to bubble and foam after a few minutes, and once it does, begin to gently swirl the pan every 20 or 30 seconds, until the milk solids are browned and look like coffee grounds.⁸ Remove the browned butter from the heat and allow it to cool.

3. While the butter cools, roast the hazelnuts until they’re browned and giving off a bit of oil, about 15 minutes. Set them aside to cool, and increase the oven temperature to 350 degrees.

4. Coat an 8-inch square pan with cooking spray, and line it with two sheets of parchment paper, laying one so one of its corners lines up with a corner of the pan, and the sheet falls over two of the pan’s sides. Lay the other so that one of its corners lines up with the opposite (diagonal) corner of the pan, and it falls over the other two sides. Crumple and crease the excess parchment paper around the lip so that the two sheets fully line the pan and stay in place. Then spray the parchment paper with cooking spray and set the pan aside.

5. When the the brown butter is approaching room temperature (it doesn’t have to be all the way there), measure out 265 grams⁹, making sure to include all of the dark milk solids. Pour the butter into the bowl of a stand mixer outfitted with the paddle attachment. Add the sugars and beat until combined, about one minute. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. The batter will smell like caramel.

6. With the mixer running on low speed, add the eggs, one at a time, and the vanilla paste, beating well after each addition.

7. Add the sourdough discard, flour, salt and baking soda, mixing on low at first and then increasing to medium speed and beating for about a minute until incorporated. The batter will have a smooth, sticky texture. Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl, then beat for 30 more seconds.

8. Add the chocolate chips and hazelnuts, beating briefly until just combined.

9. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, sprinkle a few pinches of flaky salt across the top, then return the pan to the oven and bake for 45 more minutes, until the edges are firm and the center is still slightly wobbly — but a toothpick or fork comes out clean.

10. Let the blondies cool for at least an hour before carefully lifting them out of the pan and cutting them into small pieces. These are rich and relatively tall, as far as bar cookies go, so you really don’t need to cut big pieces. An 8-inch pan should yield 12 to 15 blondies.

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    recipe! carrot-pistachio muffins

1. Make this exactly as directed. But if you’re lazy and your grocery store has skin-on, boneless thighs, you can use those. Just take the chicken out after 25-30 minutes, when it’s reached about 170 degrees, and let the potatoes keep cooking. That’s what I did, because I’m tired of deboning things.

2. I think I’ve written about this rice before as a side dish. It’s great that way, following the instructions to a tee. If you want it to feel more like an entree, here’s a hack: Cook ½ to ¾ of a pound of ground pork in the pot you’ll use to cook the rice. Scrape the cooked, browned pork out of the pot, don’t bother cleaning it, and make the rice as usual. Add the cooked pork to the peanut dressing.

3. Sometimes it’s a giant pain finding raw, unsalted nuts. Sometimes it’s also a giant pain finding any variety of hazelnuts. For that reason, I tend to order them in bulk on Amazon. Store them in the freezer!

4. If you don’t have paste, you can always substitute vanilla extract.

5. For the love of all that is good, buy bittersweet chocolate chips. The Ghiradelli brand is my favorite. Semisweet chips are by and large trash. And for this recipe in particular, you want to avoid adding any unnecessary sweetness.

6. Fleur de sel or Maldon will do the trick.

7. This is a really handy guide to browning butter, which saves me from having to type too detailed of instructions: https://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-brown-butter-238326

8. Lots of people cue smell as a great way to tell that butter is about to be browned — and smell works! It’ll give off a nutty aroma. But here’s another cue: Your butter will continue to foam and foam, even as you jostle the pan, and you won’t be able to see what’s going on underneath all that well. At some point, near the center of the pan, the bubbles will form what I always think of as a little spout, where they pull butter up from the bottom of the pan — and as soon as you see a fleck that looks like coffee grounds in that spout, you’re good!

9. This may be the exact amount you have after browning, but you’ll probably have a slight excess. Browning causes the butter to lose moisture and thus weight, so it’s always important to measure out browned butter again after the process is complete and not just rely on the measurement of cold, solid butter.