Brown Butter Pumpkin Blondies

I am very happy about how these turned out. A little experimentation and I've landed on a real winning recipe. If you want I will happily share this in a recipe card. I made a recipe card for my chocolate chip cookie recipe so I'm happy to design something if requested. Everything pumpkin this autumn. I was so lucky to have 2 magic/volunteer pumpkins grow in my garden. I didn't plant them and poof they grew into 15.3lbs and 18.5lbs monsters! So I started making everything pumpkin - pumpkin pies and pumpkin blondies. I had so much pumpkin I roasted some and made a ton of pumpkin puree. With this pumpkin blondie recipe I made 8 batches and shared them with neighbors to see what worked and what didn't. So I can confidently say I developed this recipe since I was kind of disappointed with the recipes I was using/following. I'm excited to make a batch for Halloween and Thanksgiving! Or heck Septemberween. About sugar and ratios. In my video I say you can play with the ratio of brown sugar and white sugar. Many recipes have a 1:1 ratio and many have 2:1. This is a basic explanation of sugar but it provides stability and structure and when using brown sugar you are imparting the food item with added moisture from the molasses in a deep, rich almost caramel flavor. It's excellent in butterscotch, with brown butter cookies, and of course blondies. That being said if you do increase the white sugar and decrease the brown, you'll reduce some of the moisture but offer more structure and the likelihood to get crispier edges. From the Fundamental Techniques of Classic Pastry Arts sugar is "extremely important for today's pastry chefs to know the whys and wherefores of sugar's role in food preparation....It incorporates air into fat in the creaming process of a batter or dough, collaborates with protein and starch molecules during cooking and baking, provides caramelization to the surface of cooked or baked goods, producing a golden color and inviting aroma." (Page 46–47) And "working together sugar, solid fat (such as vegetable shortening or butter), eggs, liquids, and leavening agents (those products that increase the volume and lighten the texture of baked goods) are the basic functional ingredients for almost all baked goods. The sensory and systemic characteristics of any baked product will be determined by the amount, essence, and interaction of these ingredients." (Page 47). (From what I understand you can reduce the sugar in a recipe up to 1/3 without much impact, but you should be careful because the more sugar you remove the less structure you have to hold what you are making together. That being said, I don't advise reducing sugar (unless necessary) and I think the French culinary institute who wrote that book would advise it either ;). I would advocate just trying to eat less - which of course is easier said than done.) The recipe: Dry: 275g AP flour 2 tsp cornstarch 1 tsp kosher salt Wet: 160g (3/4 cup packed) brown sugar 150g (3/4 cup) white sugar 120g (1/2 cup) pumpkin puree 1 egg plus 1 egg yolk 2 tsp of vanilla pumpkin spices (cinnamon, cardamom, allspice, cloves, star anise) 150-300g of mix ins (chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, white chocolate chips - who knew my family would not like white chocolate chips, pecans, nuts, etc.) Combine dry ingredients and set aside. Combine wet ingredients, mix until fully combined and light in color. Add dry ingredients to wet. Mix gently until just combined. Pour into 9x13 pan. Bake at 350F for 26–30 minutes. I thought 28 minutes did wonders. Please don't over bake, remember carry over heat.