blondies for the birthday blondie

There are days when you are 100% entitled to indulge in whatever suits your fancy, and one of those days would definitely be your own birthday.

So I decided that what I needed to celebrate my quarter of a century inhabiting this marvelous planet of ours (I know, it hurts me too) was to bake blondies… that and being surrounded by my dearest friends when the clock struck midnight and marked the start of March 7th.

I had never eaten, let alone baked, blondies, but I figured if they were the sisters of my beloved brownies, I´d be more than fine. I used a Mark Bittman recipe I had seen at Deb´s site with some minor tweaking: I used both semisweet and 70% chocolate chunks, 1 teaspoon of cinammon, and chopped pecans.

I can say I´m a good mum and love both siblings equally: blondies will be next to brownies in my personal baked-goods heaven. The pictures turned out pretty bad, but that´s my fault because I wanted to get it over with so that I could actually start with the eating part of the deal, after all, it´s my birthday, I should be able to do whatever I want, bad pictures be damned.

Tonight I´m cooking dinner for my family so I´ll keep adding material to the list of things to post about. My mom is the one bringing dessert though so I´m not sure what she´s up to, but if it´s good, which it highly likely, I´ll post the recipe soon… I´m hoping it´s lemon meringue pie because it´s one of my favorite pies ever, but we´ll see what she comes up with.

After the jump, there´s the recipe and some more pics of Phoebe for those of you interested (I know my blog looks like a puppy blog at times, it´s just that she keeps getting cuter by the second, which I didn´t think was possible, and I have to share the cuteness with the world).

BLONDIES (adapted from Mark Bittman´s How to Cook Everything) One recipe for a 8×8 pan or doubling the recipe for a 9×13. I did a double recipe (of course), but what follows is the single recipe. 

8 T butter, melted
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla 1 tsp cinammon
Pinch salt
1 c. all purpose flour

3/4 cup chocolate chunks (I used half 70% chocolate and half semi-sweet chocolate and chopped it roughly, but you can do it with chocolate chips, peanut butter chips or whatever you want.)

1/2 chopped pecan nuts

1. Grease pan.
2. Mix melted butter with brown sugar – beat until smooth. Beat in egg and then vanilla.
3. Add salt, stir in flour and cinammon. Mix in the chocolate and the nuts, or any other additions.
4. Pour into prepared pan. Bake at 350°F (180°C) for 20-25 minutes, or until set in the middle. Better if underbaked. Cool on rack before cutting them.