Cook's Illustrated

How to Make a Better Blondie

Do blondes have more fun? Compared with brownies, which get far more attention than their fairer counterpart, I’m not so sure. While you have to look hard to find a truly bad brownie, pale, cloying blondies seem more the rule than the exception. Add the fact that they’re often overloaded with bland white chocolate chips or artificially flavored butterscotch morsels and it’s a wonder they have any fun at all.

That’s too bad, because those times I’ve run across a blondie that’s moist, chewy, slightly dense, and full of complex butterscotch goodness, I’ve always thought that it could hold its own next to any baked treat, let alone a brownie. I wanted to perfect this bar and give it the respect it deserves.

Mistaken Identities

Before I got down to serious testing, I decided to experiment with two popular notions—that blondies are simply brownies stripped of

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