That White Chocolate Latte I made last week really got to my sweet tooth, so I decided I needed to do some baking this week. I’ve found it’s the best way to take care of almost any craving for sweets! I found this Brown Butter Bourbon Pecan Chocolate Chunk Blondies as I was perusing my Pinterest dessert board, and I just lit up. This was it! Chocolate, bourbon, and pecans all in one dessert! Plus I have never, ever, in my entire life made or had a blondie. All I knew was they were dessert bars that were somehow related to but not brownies. Well, they are brownies, but they don’t have chocolate in the batter. Huh. Well, they do have chocolate chunks, so I’ll give them a try!
Brown Butter Bourbon Pecan Chocolate Chunk Blondies are chewy, crunchy, and loaded with gooey pockets of chocolate!
The Ingredients
I usually have a lot of baking recipe ingredients in my pantry, but that wasn’t exactly the case here. I was running out of everything but salt! No matter, a quick stop at the liquor store, then a swing by the grocery store, and I was ready to bake.
Looking back at the photos, I think the author bought a chocolate bar and cut it into chunks. I didn’t have a photo with me when I did my shopping, so I just bought semi-sweet chocolate chunks. I’m sure chocolate chips would have worked too.
I did remember that the pecans in the photos were in big pieces, so I bought pecan halves and barely chopped them. I was tempted to get chopped pecans since they’re cheaper, but the pieces were tiny.
While you’re at the grocery store, remember to pick up some non-stick spray and parchment paper. You’ll need both, and they’re not on the ingredients list.
The Process
When Brown Butter Bourbon Pecan Chocolate Chunk Blondies day came around, I was raring to go! I made sure to set the eggs on the counter when I made breakfast so they would be at room temperature when I was ready to bake.
Here’s how my time was spent:
- 15 minutes to prep
- 24 minutes to bake
- 1 hour to cool
- 1 hour 39 minutes total
That’s a good deal more than the 50 minutes listed, but I think that’s because I allowed some extra time for the blondies to cool. I wanted to be extra sure they were set before I cut into them.
Browing the Butter
This recipe kicks off with browning a stick of butter. It’s simple to do and fairly quick. If you don’t know how this is a great written and video tutorial on how to brown butter. A light-colored pan is really helpful for this step, but the only one I have is a huge cast-iron Dutch oven.
I ended up using my smaller saucepan and kept a very close eye on the butter. It wasn’t too difficult for me since I have lots of experience browning butter. Tip: No matter what type of pan you use keep an eye on it because butter can go from browned to burned really fast.
Finishing Up
Once the butter was ready, I poured it into a metal mixing bowl and finished up the batter. It was stirred by hand, so it was very simple to make. Tip: The batter was quite thick, so a silicone spatula was very helpful in spreading it around the pan.
As you can see in the photo below, the chocolate chunks were pretty obvious, but the pecans were hard to see. Unfortunately, the chocolate and pecans seemed to sink into the batter as the blondies were baking. You can barely see either of them in the main photo.
I was a little disappointed by that, so I’m going to have to make these again sometime (darn it all!). I’m planning to try holding some of the chocolate and pecans chunks to the side and sprinkling them on top of the batter once it’s spread in the baking dish. I’ll be sure to update this post and let you know what happens!
