Classics: Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies

I have to be honest here.

Part of me chastised myself for a moment for even considering posting what has become known as my signature chocolate chip cookies, often complimented among my circle of friends as the best they've ever had (which is the best compliment you can give, in my opinion).

But then I thought - this recipe is not all that different from most chocolate chip cookie recipes out there. There's nothing secret or earth shattering about the ingredient list. There is, however, the inclusion one step that is usually neglected by impatient cooks and PMSing women who must have chocolate rightnow.

You must let the dough refrigerate for quite some time before you bake the cookies. A good 24 hours in the fridge or overnight in the freezer changes the texture of the final product. I'm terrible at explaining it, but somehow the cookie tastes less...something. Raw, perhaps. Or young. Like a baby cookie. Refrigerating the dough matures the flavors and texture noticeably.

But what about when you NEED A COOKIE RIGHTNOW? It's not going to help you immediately, but if you can wait for the first 24 hours, I've successfully frozen bags of the dough for weeks. Perfect for when the craving hits. And as evidenced above, baking it right away isn't necessarily bad, it's just not the same.

You will need:

2 sticks softened butter
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 tbs pure vanilla
3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt (I prefer kosher)
1 teaspoon baking soda
10 oz bag chocolate chips

Combine butter and sugars in the bowl of a stand mixer or in a large bowl. With the paddle attachment of your mixer, cream the butter and sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy. Add one egg and beat until combined. Add second egg and vanilla; beat until combined.

In a small bowl, whisk together flour, salt and baking soda. While the mixer is on low, add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in thirds, combining after each addition. If you like your chocolate chips intact, mix them in with a wooden spoon. To break them up a bit, add to the mixer bowl and combine with your paddle attachment.

Transfer dough into a gallon ziplock bag and refrigerate for at least 24 hours, or freeze for at least 8 hours.

To bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Scoop spoonfuls of dough onto an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes. Do not overbake - it is better to remove them from the oven while slightly undercooked and let them stand on the cookie sheet for a few minutes than to overbake in the oven.

Alternative: spread dough into an 11x17 baking dish and bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes (watch it!) to make cookie bars. Cool completely and turn dish onto a cutting board or platter. Cut into squares.

Chocolate Chip Bundt Cake

I don't usually jump on a recipe - often, I'll see something online and let it bounce around in my head for a while before I take the time to cook whatever it may be. But having only recently acquired a bundt pan, it seemed meant to be that I would happen upon this Chocolate Chip Bundt Cake when I had a bundt pan to break in, when I was on vacation, and when Alyssa, the ultimate connoisseur of all things chocolate chip, was in my midst.

This recipe was actually adapted from a fruit and nut cake batter by Dorie Greenspan, only as Bridget over at The Way the Cookie Crumbles pointed out, the ingredients are quite similar to what a classic chocolate chip cookie would call for, so why not replace pears and walnuts with chocolate? Alyssa had multiple pieces over the weekend, so I would certainly classify this one as kid-friendly.

You will need:

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 sticks (8 oz.) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cups (packed) light brown sugar
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk, at room temperature
1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
Confectioners' sugar, for dusting

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350º F. Butter a 9- to 10-inch (12 cup) bundt pan, dust the inside with flour and tap out the excess. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with the paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar together at medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, beating for 1 minute after each addition. Beat in the vanilla. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the flour mixture and the buttermilk alternately - add the flour in 3 additions and the buttermilk in 2 (begin and end with the dry ingredients). Mix only until the ingredients are incorporated and scrape down the bowl as needed. With a rubber spatula, stir in the chocolate chips. Scrape the batter into the pan and smooth the top with the spatula.

Bake for 60 to 65 minutes, or until a thin knife inserted deep into the center of the cake comes out clean. (If the cake looks as if it's browning too fast, cover the top loosely with a foil tent.) Transfer the cake to a rack and cool for 10 minutes before unmolding, then cool to room temperature on the rack.

When you are ready to serve, dust the top of the cake with confectioners' sugar.

Spicy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Man, has it been dull around here lately.

Not that there hasn't been plenty to do - birthday parties, Predators games, lunch dates and deadlines continue to punctuate everyday life - but dinner? It's not been much to write about. In fact, it's been downright sad.

For the last week and a half, Josh has been on a fruit and vegetable detox which allows minimal protein and no sugar (I say Josh has been on the detox, but I have been too - only I lasted 6 days and he's still trucking along). The cravings for so many bad things I never typically want were overwhelming and I had to get back to my normal way of eating. So here we are out of the gate with good, old fashioned chocolate chip cookies - only these cookies aren't as classic as they appear. Along with chocolate chips, they are studded with chopped sweet and spicy pecans from Trader Joe's and kicked up by cayenne and cinnamon in the batter.

The detox helped me lose 5 pounds, but these cookies helped me to feel normal again.

You will need:
 
2 sticks unsalted butter
2 1/4 cups bread flour
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 cup white sugar
1 1/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 tbsp milk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup Trader Joe's sweet and spicy pecans, coarsely chopped

Melt butter, waching closely, until it begins to brown. Do not allow to burn! Add to mixing bowl. In another bowl combine flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon and cayenne.

Add sugars to mixing bowl with butter. Cream butter and sugar on medium speed. While mixing on medium speed, add eggs, milk, and vanilla. Slowly add in flour until well incorporated.

Stir in chocolate chips and pecans with a wooden spoon.

Chill dough for at least 24 hours, up to 36 (trust me on this one).

The next day, preheat oven to 375° F. Grease your cookie sheets or line them with parchment paper. Place cookies about an inch apart on baking sheets, and bake each sheet 8-12 minutes or until golden and puffy.

Adapted from Alton Brown's "The Chewy."

Bread Pudding Cups

I committed at the last minute to bring something for a company bake sale yesterday, knowing I wasn’t going to have much time that evening for baking. A fussy dessert was out, and whatever it was I wound up bringing had to be portioned into individual servings for a bake sale. What to do?

When I went home for lunch, my answer was right in front of my face. I still had half a pan of bread pudding from the weekend in the fridge and decided in a moment of brilliance what I was going to do. Mini bread puddings portioned out in muffin cups! And I would only need to pick up a few things from the grocery store. I had no idea how they would bake in muffin cups, but they held their shape wonderfully and stood at room temperature both overnight and through the bake sale without issue. To top it off, they were delicious and raised money for a good cause.

You will need:

1 pint cream or whole milk
2 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

1 bag semisweet chocolate chips

1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

1 loaf (12 ounces) Italian bread, torn into small pieces

1 package King's Hawaiian Rolls, torn into small pieces

In a large bowl, combine cream or milk with eggs and whisk. Add vanilla, salt, sugars and melted butter and whisk until combined. Pour in chocolate chips and walnuts, if using, and stir to combine the mixture. Add bread and using your hands, toss the bread cubes until all are coated. Be sure to distribute the chocolate chips and walnuts throughout the mixture as they have a tendency to sink to the bottom.

Line 2 12-cup muffin tins with muffin wrappers and evenly divide the bread pudding mixture among 20 of the cups (the mixture should mound over the top of the cups slightly). Bake in a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes or until the bread is golden and the chocolate has melted. Allow to cool and remove from muffin tin. Serve warm, cold or at room temperature - but they're best warm and gooey.

February Daring Baker's Challenge: Panna Cotta


Q: What could be more indulgent than a dessert comprised nearly entirely of heavy cream?

A: A dessert comprised nearly entirely of heavy cream, with added sugar and hot fudge, served from a champagne flute and enjoyed after an extraordinarily decadent 3-course dinner at home.

The February 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mallory from A Sofa in the Kitchen. She chose to challenge everyone to make Panna Cotta from a Giada De Laurentiis recipe and Nestle Florentine Cookies.

Well, I forgot about the cookies. And I used a David Leibovitz recipe. Whoops.

Otherwise, thank goodness this challenge came around when it did, because we decided to cook at home this year on Valentine's Day, and I had no idea what to make for dessert. Chocolate was a given, but if I made cake, we would be left with far too many leftovers - plus I have issues with eating my weight in cake batter. Panna cotta also requires (or rather, demands) vanilla beans instead of extract, and I happen to be fascinated with vanilla beans. Sold!

Since it would be just the two of us, I divided the following recipe in half (but stuck with one whole vanilla bean), and the panna cotta mixture still divided perfectly among 3 champagne flutes (kindly ignore the price tags on my champagne flutes). I topped each flute with an espresso hot fudge sauce. While the pudding and the sauce were lovely and a perfect end to an indulgent meal, I think I finally understand what people mean when they say something is “too rich” – I couldn’t finish my glass. This summer, I’d love to experiment with different toppings, like fresh berries or peaches, and serve dessert in smaller cups.
You will need:

4 cups heavy cream (my heavy cream carton yielded only half of this, so I topped it off with skim milk and the results were fine)
½ cup sugar
2 tsp vanillia extract, or one vanilla bean, split lengthwise
2 packets powdered gelatin
6 tbs cold water

Heat the heavy cream and sugar in a saucepan. Once the sugar is dissolved, remove from heat and stir in the vanilla extract. If you are using a vanilla bean, scrape the seeds from the bean into the cream and add the bean pod. Cover, and let infuse for 30 minutes. Remove the bean then rewarm the mixture before continuing. Lightly oil eight custard cups with a neutral-tasting oil, or spray lightly with cooking spray.

Sprinkle the gelatin over the cold water in a medium-sized bowl and let stand 5 to 10 minutes. Pour the very warm panna cotta mixture over the gelatin and stir until the gelatin is completely dissolved.

Divide the panna cotta mixture into the prepared cups/glasses, then chill them until firm, which will take at least two hours. Cover with plastic wrap if not enjoying immediately after they have set.

Top with desired garnish - some ideas are:

Hot fudge
A mix of white and semisweet chocolate chips
Caramel sauce
Macerated berries
Grilled peaches
Candied nuts
 
Go crazy! Here's the link to the original post.

November Daring Baker's Challenge: Crostata

This chocolate and ricotta tart is light, fresh and easy to make. I do wish I had gone with a different pastry - something saltier and flakier - but for the quick pastry it is, it works well with the ricotta filling. We had a couple of pieces once it cooled, and left the rest of the tart in the freezer for several weeks until the day after Thanksgiving, and it froze and defrosted perfectly.

The 2010 November Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Simona of briciole. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make pasta frolla for a crostata. She used her own experience as a source, as well as information from Pellegrino Artusi’s Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well.

These challenges are helping me to better equip my kitchen - I've been after a tart pan for ages, and even though we were allowed to make a free-form tart, I took this challenge as the best excuse I could fathom to get my hands on a tart pan!

The recipe I used came from Broxholm Road (warning: measurements are given in Metric format, so some conversions and/or a kitchen scale are necessary).

And here's the challenge post.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Birthday Cake

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me...

I'm a bit late as I actually turned 27 six days ago, but this cake was simply too phenomenal not to blog. It was by far the richest, most decadent cake I've made since I shunned the boxed mixes for cakes from scratch. And seeing as how I've made cakes for several (7) friends and family members this year, I figured I may as well go all out for myself.

There are certain flavors and combinations I am always drawn to: marshmallow and chocolate, caramel and graham crackers, and of course, peanut butter and chocolate. I considered a drizzle of caramel over this cake, but ultimately decided to leave well enough alone. It certainly didn't disappoint!

So far, 27 is sweet.

For the cake, you will need:

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 cups sugar
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, preferably Dutch process
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup neutral vegetable oil, such as canola, soybean or vegetable blend
1 cup sour cream
1 1/2 cups water
2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter the bottoms and sides of two 9-inch round cakepans. Line the bottom of each pan with a round of parchment or waxed paper and butter the paper.

Sift the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt into a large bowl. Whisk to combine them well. Add the oil and sour cream and whisk to blend. Gradually beat in the water. Blend in the vinegar and vanilla. Whisk in the eggs and beat until well blended. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and be sure the batter is well mixed. Divide among the 2 prepared cake pans.

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until a cake tester or wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out almost clean. Let cool in the pans for about 20 minutes. Invert onto wire racks, carefully peel off the paper liners, and let cool completely.

For the frosting, you will need:

10 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
1 stick (4 ounces) butter, at room temperature
5 cups powdered sugar, sifted
2/3 cup smooth peanut butter, (commercial, not "natural" PB is best - I used Jif)

In a large bowl with an electric mixer, beat the cream cheese and butter until light and fluffy. Gradually add the powdered sugar 1 cup at a time, mixing thoroughly after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl often. Continue to beat on medium speed until light and fluffy, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the peanut butter and beat until thoroughly blended.

For the glaze, you will need:

8 ounces seimsweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
3 tablespoons smooth peanut butter
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1/2 cup half-and-half

In the top of a double boiler or in a bowl set over simmering water, combine the chocolate, peanut butter, and corn syrup. Cook, whisking often, until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is well combined.

Remove from the heat and whisk in the half-and-half, beating until smooth. Use while still warm.

To assemble:

I cut one of my layers in half - you can skip that, or cut them both in half (though you may want to double the frosting if you cut them both into two layers).

Place one layer, flat side up, on a cake stand or large serving plate. Spread the PB frosting evenly over the top. Repeat with the next layer. Place the last layer on top and frost the top and sides of the cake with the remaining frosting. This should be a thin "crumb coat" to seal in the dark crumbs against the light frosting. Refrigerate the cake for thirty minutes to an hour, then frost completely with a thick layer of frosting.

To achieve the drip-glaze, start by pouring the mixture over the top center of the cake (freezing the frosted cake for at least an hour before topping with the warm glaze will help). Using an offset spatula, spread the glaze over the top of the cake and let it drip slowly over the sides.

Adapted ever so slightly from Smitten Kitchen.

Chocolate Chip Shakes

If you were to ask Alyssa what her favorite beverage is, I'm betting a million to one that she would answer Starbucks' Double Chocolaty Chip Frappuccino. Actually, she refers to it as "frozen hot chocolate," so you'd win that bet on a technicality. As the days have gotten hotter and hotter, she requests "girl time" visits to Starbucks with a frequency that may eventually land me on our local Starbucks VIP list, if such a list exists.

When I spoke to her on the phone this week, she requested a trip this weekend, as she generally does. As a home cook, I was surprised to find myself offering for the very first time to learn to make them for her instead. Duh.

By the way, I would never feed this already-climbing-the-walls eight year old a coffee drink. This is a cream-based Frappuccino that wires her up enough with its unapologetic chocolaty-ness.

You will need:

1 cup of milk

2 tablespoons of sugar

1/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips
3 tablespoons chocolate syrup
2 cups of ice
1/8 tsp vanilla
 
I found this to work perfectly and even managed to blend it well with an immersion (hand) blender, since our standard upright blender broke a few months back. Feel free to experiment and play around with the proportions until it's just right. This gave us 3 juice-glass sized servings.
 
Prefer your Frap with some whipped cream? You'll need:

1 cup heavy cream, very cold
2-3 tablespoons sugar

Beat, beat, beat, until stiff, about 4 minutes. Plop by the spoonful atop the shakes and drizzle with chocolate syrup, if you can handle more chocolate.

Please an eight year old today.

Or a thirty year old.

August Daring Baker's Challenge: Ice Cream Petits Four

I found my first Daring Baker's challenge to be...well, challenging.

I do realize that's the whole point. I knew what I was getting into, if only from the examples I've seen around the blogosphere. And truth be told, if participating in these challenges is going to teach me anything, the biggest lesson I'll learn is time management.

The August 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Elissa of 17 and Baking. For the first time, The Daring Bakers partnered with Sugar High Fridays for a co-event, and Elissa was the gracious hostess of both. Using the theme of beurre noisette, or browned butter, Elissa chose to challenge Daring Bakers to make a pound cake to be used in either a Baked Alaska or in Ice Cream Petits Four. The sources for Elissa’s challenge were Gourmet magazine and David Lebovitz’s “The Perfect Scoop.”

Ok, ice cream. It was about to be another in a string of 95+ degree days, and apart from that, it's definitely a new skill, which is why I set out to join this group in the first place.

Though we were given free reign on the type of ice cream to make, I didn't want to attempt spreading my creative wings too far this time around, given that it was my first challenge. My head swirled with ideas: coconut-lime ice cream, blackberry-lemon, chocolate and pretzel, etc. Instead I played it safe (or so I thought), with a classic chocolate-vanilla stracciatella (literal translation from Italian: torn apart).

Stracciatella is an Italian version of American chocolate chip ice cream (my favorite). Near the end of the freezing process, you simply drizzle ribbons of hot, melted dark chocolate over the frozen custard, and nearly immediately break it up, creating broken chips of dark chocolate running through the ice cream.

Nearly immediately. Remember I said that.

Infusing the milk with vanilla went well (vanilla beans on sale at World Market through September - 2 for $2.99!).

The custard process went well.

I was pleased with the taste, pleased with the way it was setting up in the ice bath. It went into the freezer at 7:00; I finally left the kitchen around 12:15. Because I don't have an ice cream maker - an appliance I'd have never deemed necessary until I attempted the process manually - I attacked the freezing ice cream with a hand mixer every 30 minutes in between. Two to three hours to until ready to eat, David Lebovitz? This is the first time you've ever led me astray.

At 11:45 in an otherwise sleeping house, I melted 5 ounces of dark chocolate over a double boiler, and pulled my almost-set ice cream out of the freezer. I drizzled the chocolate over the top, neglecting to break up the larger blobs (mistake #1), and set it back in the freezer for about 10 minutes (mistake #2).

When I pulled it out again, the chocolate was hard as a rock, but I proceeded to assail it with my hand mixer regardless (mistake #3). Chocolate flew everywhere as the whirling beaters struck the hardened blobs, splattering my countertops with dark, sticky lumps. Panicked that I might soon fling chocolate within reach of the sleepily curious dogs at my feet, I gave up on the mixer and pulled the bigger chunks out with my fingers. I started to chop them on a cutting board, but the clonk of my knife meeting frozen chocolate was not a sound suited for midnight. So I brought out the cheese grater and grated the blobs until my fingers were dripping with body heat-melted chocolate.

I then gave up completely, took one final picture of the mess I'd created:

And flopped into bed.

In the morning, the stuff actually looked pretty good. I fluffed it up a bit with a fork, and let it melt just a little bit later in the evening so I could have a go at it one more time with the hand mixer.

The melting before the last freeze turned out to be the key: even though Josh eschewed the mixer and volunteered to stir it by hand, it re-froze creamy and smooth, and I had to stop everyone in the house from progressively chipping away at my ice cream supply. It turned out to be precious stuff, after everything I had to do to get it there.

Making the pound cake went smoothly. Aside from the 19 tablespoons of butter (the browned butter added a lot of depth to the taste of the batter, but honestly I could not taste it in the final product), the process wasn't much unlike any other cake I've made in the past. Plus, I found myself a sous chef for challenges to come.

Frankly, I can't be bothered to write much about the cake, assembly or glazing - even though the glazing turned out to be a huge nightmare - lest this saga continue much longer. In the end, I wound up with 12 cute iced petits four, which was decidedly less than the number of lopsided, melty rectangles Josh and Alyssa ate off the pan (the first picture in this post, of a petit four cut in half, is without ice cream. It separated from its other half and I was dumb enough to use that one as the display picture).

If I were to make this recipe again, it should come as no surprise that I'd more than likely make a full-size cake, and I will utilize store-bought ice cream - impressed though everyone was that the ice cream was both delicious and made without a machine.

Here's a link to the recipes and the original post (and some examples that turned out better than mine did).

Oatmeal-Raisin-Chocolate-Chip Cookies

Before baking these, I had eaten precisely one oatmeal cookie in my entire 26 years. That statement alone probably sums it up - the cookie to blame for such an opinion was consumed years ago, given to me by my piano teacher. It was crumbly, improperly sweetened, studded with parched raisins and reeked of cinnamon (perhaps this is the origin of my cinnamon aversion as well). I promptly wrote them off as repulsive non-cookies I would never go near again, and never accepted another baked good from her - having later learned that she baked everything with whole wheat flour and used carob instead of chocolate. I am of the opinion that dessert should just be dessert...if you're going to do it, don't health it up.

As Josh and I were daydreaming about the impending shipment of the oven control board last month, his eyes lit up with the spark that accompanies a sudden great idea. “Hey, here’s an idea,” he said. “let's make some oatmeal-raisin cookies. Could you do that?”

I sneered. I certainly could make them, though I would have zero interest in eating them. But, maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing to quell my next baking impulse with cookies I wouldn’t want to shove in my face straight out of the oven.

I searched Smitten Kitchen (always a reliable source) for oatmeal cookies, and came across one recipe that I figured Josh would probably enjoy. Deb claimed the cookies were chewy and thick if you refrigerate them for a while after the dough comes together, which I'd never considered before. For my own twist on the recipe, I supplemented about half the amount of raisins in the recipe with chocolate chips.

I've seen the light.

One taste of the cookie dough later, and I can now call myself an oatmeal-raisin cookie convert. I’m smart enough to know that 1) the cookie I ate as an 8 year old was just poorly done, no two ways about it, and 2) tastes change as we age. The majority of foods I turned up my nose at as a teenager are now among my favorites (hello green beans).

So much for my cookie kryptonite…I ate two.

You will need:

½ cup (one stick) butter, softened
2/3 cup brown sugar, packed
1 egg
½ tsp vanilla
¾ cup flour
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp salt
1 ½ cups oats (not quick oats)
Scant ½ cup raisins
Scant ½ cup chocolate chips

In a mixing bowl with an electric mixer, cream together butter and sugar. Add egg and vanilla and beat to combine. Beat in dry ingredients until combined. Stir in oats, raisins and chocolate chips.

Refrigerate for at least 10 minutes, then roll tablespoon-sized balls and drop onto a cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

Blondies with Caramel Sauce

I had never even heard of a blondie before last night.

Josh, PJ and I worked for a few hours in the backyard yesterday, 'un-rednecking it' as I like to say. The backyard is a steep upward slope, and of course most of the crap we needed to get rid of was near the top of the hill. Since it turned out to be such a good workout, I thought we all deserved a brownie after dinner. But I didn't have boxed brownies. So as I went in search of a from-scratch brownie recipe in my trusty Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, I stumbled upon an interesting recipe title: Blondies.

"Blondies?" I questioned Josh. "I've never heard of blondies." He said he'd heard that they were a cookie/brownie type of concoction, but that he'd never actually tried one himself. Reading on, I learned that blondies are a butterscotch-based cookie bar studded with chocolate chips. Oooh. Given my recent discovery of homemade caramel, and needing to utilize the jar of leftover homemade caramel in the fridge (before I ate one more cold spoonful), I went for it. Blessedly, I had everything in the pantry.

Oh. My. Goodness.

Blondies will make you sing. They had me so transfixed that I forgot to take several pictures during the baking process, and they were so incredibly rich and delicious that I had to send them with Josh to work just to get them out of my grasp.

You will need:

2 cups packed brown sugar
2/3 cup butter (1 stick plus all but 3 tbs from another stick)
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 cup semisweet chocolate pieces
1 cup chopped nuts (if you want, but I left them out)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a 13x9 baking pan; set aside. In a medium saucepan heat brown sugar and butter over medium heat, until butter melts and the mixture is smooth, stirring constantly. You should just barely be able to taste the grit from the brown sugar, if you give it a (or many) taste as I did. Allow me to warn you of the molten temperature sugar can reach...and how much it hurts when it's too sticky to get off your finger. So use a spoon.

Remove from heat and cool slightly. Break an egg into a separate bowl and temper with a little bit of the sugar mixture. This means you will add a small amount of the hot liquid into the egg to raise its temperature while you beat it, so the egg won't immediately scramble when it meets the hot sugar. Stir in tempered eggs one at a time; add vanilla. Stir in flour, baking powder and baking soda.

Spread batter in prepared baking pan. Sprinkle with chocolate chips and nuts.

Bake in preheated oven for 25-30 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted near center comes out clean. The blondies will more than likely puff up around the sides, appearing to sink in the middle. This is good; this is what you want.

Cool slightly in pan on wire rack. Cut into bars while warm. Die. Repeat.

For an even more terribly decadent treat, heat some caramel and pour it over blondies individually, right before serving.

Here's a quick homemade caramel:

1 cup (2 sticks) butter
1 cup packed light brown sugar
Pinch sea salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a medium saucepan, melt the butter and brown sugar together, and stir it over medium heat until it begins to boil. Once it has begun boiling, let it bubble for three more minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from the heat and add the salt and vanilla, and then quickly pour it into a glass jar if storing, or onto a prepared dessert.