(for Antonia’s birthday)
It’s Antonia’s birthday, and she’d like something with pumpkin. Since I experiment on her constantly with my baking, she deserves something customized for her birthday. These blondies also included a honey and caramel drizzle baked into them, which sounded pretty delicious to me. Guess what? They ARE delicious. They’re birthday delicious. They’re sticky and gooey, too, in a way that makes it impossible to cut them neatly or make them look pretty. I’m thinking that all the butter and sugar had something to do with that.
It’s fun baking with butter again, I admit it. I actually gave it time to soften properly instead of using the microwave, so it was the perfect texture for the stand mixer and with the help of the sugar, it quickly turned into this:
In a separate bowl, I got the dry ingredients together. All purpose flour this time, no whole wheat white. Added baking soda, salt, and spices. I kept the cloves at the recommended half teaspoon, kept the nutmeg at half, but I upped the ginger to half a teaspoon from a quarter and did two heaping teaspoons of cinnamon.
I whisked that up, then went back to the stand mixer. I was following the recipe closely on this one. I added an egg and then the vanilla — a full tablespoon. That seemed like a lot, but I did it anyway.
I mixed.
I added the pumpkin.
Then Nathaniel came by to show me his latest Lego creation.
I started adding the flour mixture to the pumpkin and butter bowl, a little at a time, keeping the mixer on low speed.
When I was done, there was a LOT of batter.
I pulled the bowl away from the mixer and added the cinnamon chips. The recipe said to use mini cinnamon chips, and if I could find them, I’d use them. I love the mini chip. I used a little over a cup.
Nathaniel, Dave, and I all tasted the batter. Then we ate all of it and didn’t bake anything for Antonia’s birthday.
Oh wait, that was in the alternate reality version of this baking endeavor.
We did all taste it, and we did all love it. Then I poured and scraped it all into a baking dish, and quickly threw the bowl into the sink and poured dish soap into it so that I didn’t devour whatever was still stuck to the bowl.
Then I added the final touch: 3 tablespoons of honey and 2 tablespoons of caramel, drizzled on top.
While it was in the oven, I stepped into the playroom to check out Nathaniel’s latest Lego empire. He’d already gone to bed at that point, so I photographed it in case he decided to take it apart in the morning. I never know what his Lego plans entail until they happen.
Impressive, no? He’s quite the builder.
The blondies were done in about 40 minutes. The kitchen smelled fantastic.
Check out the close-up.
It was full of glazed sticky goodness.
I did my best to cut this thing into large pieces to bring it to work, but every time I sliced, it got all sticky and gooey. These brownies will not win any beauty pageants, but the flavor? The texture? The overall birthday deliciousness? A+ and then some. These are melt-in-your-mouth fantastic.
I brought them to the office with confidence, and gave them to the birthday girl.
She loved them. So did everybody else.
What an amazing recipe! You can’t go wrong with it, really. Just amazingly, tantalizingly, memorably delicious. Next time I’ll skip the recommended tin foil at the bottom of the pan and trust my instincts, that only made it harder to get clean pieces of it out of the baking dish. (It did, however, result in some slightly mangled pieces that got donated to Dave, Nathaniel, and Juliet.)
Happy birthday Antonia!!!!
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