Toffee Crunch Blondies: The Confession

Toffee Crunch Blondies

This is one of those recipes that you find on the package of one of the recipe’s main ingredients. In this case, the recipe is Toffee Crunch Blondies and the ingredient is Chipits® Skor® Toffee Bits. I made these quick and easy bars as part of our Christmas goodies last year and they are back by popular demand this year.

Except this year they’re going to be a bit different. Last year, when you took one of these off the cookie plate, you bit into a soft cookie with toffee crunchies on top. This year, you may think you’re biting into a slice of a crunchy caramel butter tart bar. And this is where the confession comes in. You see the recipe calls for a ½ cup of butter. If you look closely at the photo of the ingredients below, you’ll notice a much larger chunk of butter than that. In fact, I accidentally doubled the butter to 1 cup. I discovered this trying to figure out why the dough looked noticeably undercooked after 25 minutes in the oven. Then it hit me what I’d done.

So what now? I thought it would be prudent to taste what I had made before I chucked it into the garbage. Always the optimist, I cut the cake into 36 bars as if everything was going to be okay and ate a bar. Not too bad, not too bad at all, but still a little underdone. I put the whole thing (except for the bar I ate and the second one I ate just to be sure) back into the oven for another ten minutes.

When the time was up, I sampled another bar to see if the extra time in the oven spelled success. Happily, those ten minutes were all the blondies needed to become plateworthy. While the middle remained buttery and runny, reminiscent of a butter tart, the bottom of the bar was crisp as a cookie and the top had the expected toffee crunchiness. I ate another bar in celebration.

Without further delay, here’s the recipe for Toffee Crunch Blondies - Two Ways. (I highly recommend putting this into storage as soon as they are cool enough or they may disappear before your holiday company arrives.)

MA’s Toffee Crunch Blondies - Two Ways

Ingredients

Preheat oven to 350º F.

Grease a 13 x 9 inch baking pan.

The Soft Cookie Way:

½ cup butter, softened

1 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

¼ tsp salt

1 ½ cups toffee bits, divided into 1 cup and ½ cup

Spread evenly

Beat together the butter, sugar and eggs until well blended.

Stir in flour, baking powder, baking soda and salts. Mix well.

Stir in 1 cup toffee bits.

Spread mixture evenly into baking pan.

Bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown.

Sprinkle bits on hot blondies

Remove from oven and sprinkle immediately with ½ cup of toffee bits.

Let cool, then cut into bars.

The Creamier Centre Way:

Same as above but use 1 cup of softened butter and bake for 35 minutes or until golden brown.

Makes 3 dozen good-sized bars.

Printable Recipe for MA's Toffee Crunch Blondies - Two Ways