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Hello everyone, I'm Claire Saffitz. Welcome to my rented kitchen. I have a bunch of fall baking recipes for you. And everything I show is very, very simple, because we are in a rented house and I didn't bring my entire kitchen with me. Today I have a recipe for apple blondies with molasses. I add dried apple pieces, it's so delicious, simple, chewy and perfect for the holidays. Blondies are essentially brownies without the chocolate. And I always want something really chewy and tasty. In brownies, I achieve this by using a very high proportion of chocolate, such as a bar. This gives it an incredible chewy texture. For blondie, I was trying to figure out how to get something similar. And the best solution I found is to use a liquid
sweetener. So today I'm using molasses for my blondies. This makes blondies so chewy and delicious. I have to say that this recipe should have nuts, but I didn't use them. Last night I was cooking something and thought: it would definitely be worth adding walnuts to this. So, the ingredients. I have plain flour, dried apples, and two eggs. I'll use one whole egg and yolk, kosher salt, molasses, a little brown sugar, vanilla-I brought some vanilla from home, cinnamon, and of course, butter. Inventory: I only have an 8-by-8- inch baking pan. You knew I wouldn't just melt butter. I will make the butter brown. So there's a stew pot for that, and this is my bowl. It's just a
coincidence.There was a set of plastic bowls. I just don't like working with plastic bowls. So I use this weird, sort of, saucepan as a mixing bowl. And there was a broom in the house. So, the first thing I want to do is start mixing the dry ingredients. I need to get a teaspoon to measure. You know what's interesting? I brought my scales. Because they don't take up much space, and I thought it would make the process much easier. I just knew. I told myself: just take them. And then, when I was measuring out the ingredients last night, I thought, " I don't know." Those measuring cups that were in the house seem wrong to me. They don't meet the standards at all.
I weighed everything because they are inaccurate. So you shouldn't, you shouldn't necessarily trust your measuring cups for dry ingredients. So, I have a cup and a half of flour here. I'll add a teaspoon and a half of cinnamon, and I only use cinnamon because I don't want to bother with a bunch of different baking spices. But you can certainly make a mixture. You can add a little nutmeg. A little pinch of cloves-that's very, very good. When I made this before, I added a little clove and I really liked it. But for now, just cinnamon. And now I'm going to add a teaspoon of kosher salt. So I just mix it with a whisk. Now I'll put that aside. We
will make brown butter. I have a small saucepan. I'll add oil. So, I have a bar and a half. That's 12 tablespoons. I will save the butter wrappers because they have some butter left on them and I will use them to grease the pan. The main thing in making brown butter is to constantly monitor it. Brown oil is obtained when all the water from the oil boils away. The temperature can then rise and the milk particles begin to toast and turn golden brown. So don't move away because it will start to spray hot oil. What to look out for: it will start to bubble, and over time, during the cooking process, it will go
from a violent boil to a calmer foaming, and that's how you'll know it's almost there. Therefore, at this point you need to stand nearby and stir carefully, because it can very quickly go from golden brown to black and burnt. So when it gets very dark, a deep amber color, I'll take it off the heat and pour it into a bowl. So, the brown butter became very dark, but not burnt. This will give us the most flavor, but since I don't want it to burn, I pour it into a bowl. It's just a way to remove it from a hot saucepan. This is probably the only part of the recipe that can't just be done "automatically". We just need to let it cool down. Good. So, I have a form. The oven is already preheated to 350 degrees, and I saved the butter wrapper to lightly grease the pan. It is not
necessary to lubricate it completely. You only need a little bit of leftover oil to keep the parchment from sticking. So, we use parchment. And I have a piece of parchment. Sometimes I just line the pan with a single rectangle of parchment, along the bottom and sides. I decided to take a different approach: cut the corners out of a large square, place it in a mold so that all four sides fit around it. So I just flatten it out, and since there's butter in there, the parchment has something to grab onto. The result is a beautifully and neatly lined form. I'll put this here.
Now, to help the brown butter cool down faster, I'll grab some ice. I won't even do an ice bath. Sometimes I just rub an ice cube on the bottom of a bowl or saucepan. It's not even that hot anymore. You want the butter to be liquid but at room temperature. If you make it in advance and it cools completely and starts to harden again, that's fine too. I'm going to add sweeteners to this mixture. I have 3/4 cup of light brown or dark brown sugar. I pour it inside. Then I'll add 1/4 cup of molasses. Liquid sweeteners in baked goods make them much chewier.
This is because they retain moisture. This gives it just a wonderful texture. So they add both flavor and texture here. So, it goes the same way. It seems to me that this is some kind of oversized measuring cup for a quarter cup. The volume is probably a little off, but it doesn't really matter. Molasses is sweet because it is a byproduct of sugar refining, but it also has a bitter taste. This is very important so that the blondies don't turn out too sweet. And now I'll add some water. When we cooked the butter and fried it, we got rid of all the water. Water is a very important ingredient in baking chemistry. It reacts with the flour and helps create an emulsion. So I'll just add a tablespoon of water back in. And
now I'm just going to put it all together. Here you can see that the fat has not emulsified with the sugar. It seems to have flaked off and looks a little oily. So we'll whisk until everything is well combined and the mixture is no longer too shiny from the butter, taking on a satiny texture. This stage actually takes a little time. So don't stop if it seems like nothing is working. Just keep stirring and whisking and everything will come together. Here, I see that the melted butter that was on top is starting to be absorbed. I get a more uniform, smooth mixture. This is exactly what is needed. Now I'm going to add the eggs. I'll add one
whole egg, one large whole egg. Make sure the eggs are at room temperature. And then I'll add one yolk. One of the features of these blondies is the lack of baking powder. There is no baking powder or baking soda here. This is because I don't want the blondies to look like a cupcake. I don't want my brownies or blondies to be flaky like a pie. I like dense, chewy blondie brownies. So, there's no baking powder, and I add one egg and one yolk instead of two whole eggs, because whole eggs add a little bit of lift, they make the dough fluffier when baking. The yolk is needed for saturation, emulsification, and this density. We whisk it all together, and the egg will help emulsify the
mixture and combine it even better. Now I'm going to add vanilla, 2 teaspoons. Because vanilla, along with brown butter and sugar, gives toffees the most delicious flavor. Now I add all the dry ingredients. If you don't want to mix them in a bowl first , but just want to pour everything in-that's fine too. I really think this recipe would benefit from adding nuts. I don't know why I didn't think of this when I first tested the recipe. But the combination of apples, cinnamon, molasses, and toasted walnuts would be just wonderful. So I recommend doing this if you're going to cook them at home. I started whisking slowly so that the flour wouldn't scatter in different directions. But then you can beat a little more intensively. Just beat until the dough is
smooth. Now we just stir in the chopped dried apples. This is about 2/3 cup of dried apples. And I just love how it creates these chewy lumps inside the already chewy blondie. And the apple adds a little acidity, which is actually very good. This goes well with the taste of molasses. And if you're going to use nuts, add them now. Just mix them in. I have my oven preheated to 350 degrees. The baking sheet is in the center. I bake in a metal pan, it's the best option. If you have a glass one, you should lower the temperature by 25 degrees. So now we have this lovely smooth dough. I will translate it into form. They are not decorated in any way. There is no watering or decoration here.
They are quite simple, but very tasty. The thing with blondies and brownies is this: if you don't get, especially with brownies, that crispy, shiny crust, you want to add something, but they're sweet enough as it is. That's why I don't really like adding frosting. You can just make a little ganache. Oh, I also brought a small angled spatula from home. I knew I would need it. I smooth it out in the corners and along the sides. Now they will be baked. One of the advantages of any bars is that they bake quickly. They bake for about 22 minutes, somewhere between 20 and 25 in your home oven at 350 degrees. I'll set
the timer for 22 minutes, which is how long my batch took to cook yesterday. It smells so nice here- Often with blondies and brownies, your nose will tell you that they are almost done. I checked after 22 minutes and they needed a little longer. So I'll look at them now, in about a minute. Yes, they are ready. I'll show you what they look like. You want them to be barely cooked, about the way you cook a piece of salmon. I want it to be cooked inside, I don't want it raw. But as soon as it's baked, I want to take it out right away. Here you can see that the edges have risen a little and cracked. This is what it should be, but the middle is still a little shiny and soft. And now the main secret to texture: never cut hot brownies or blondies, they will
fall apart and be tasteless. The best thing to do is let them cool, and then refrigerate them well. You'll want to enjoy them at room temperature, but after they've cooled. After all, when they cool, the butter solidifies again, the sugar seems to recrystallize and harden, which creates the perfect texture. So I'll let them cool and then put them in the fridge. They should stand there for at least a couple of hours until they become cold. I made a batch yesterday, so I'll show it to you now. I let them cool. The bottom was a little warm before I put them in the fridge. If they are still a little warm and you need to put them in the refrigerator, don't cover them. You shouldn't keep steam inside. Now I will carefully remove them from the parchment. I'll use a
serrated knife. It will help me cut apple slices more easily. I would say that these blondes are very rich. They have a lot of butter, a lot of ingredients, so I like to cut them into smaller pieces. So, I'm going to cut them 4 by 4 to make 16 pieces. OK. Now I'll show you what they look like inside. At the edges, where they are a little more overcooked, the texture is more like a cookie or cupcake. And inside they have a different texture-denser, chewier, moister, but fully baked. This is not raw dough. Well, I'll try. this would be a secret favorite at a cookie exchange party. First, the cinnamon here doesn't overwhelm the taste at all. It's the perfect amount of warm spices. Of course, apples and cinnamon go together wonderfully,
but the main thing here is the texture. They're so chewy, and there are these little pieces of apple. They are quite rich, with a slight molasses flavor, but very tasty. So if you're more of a brownie lover and think you don't like blondies because they're too sweet, or you say, "I only like chocolate," try these. The bitterness of molasses and apples add lots of interesting nuances. They are not too sweet. They are simply incredibly delicious and perfect for the holidays thanks to the molasses, warm spices, and apples. This is a truly wonderful fall baking that is very easy to make. So, I'll prepare some more easy baking recipes for you for fall or the holidays. And thank you very much for watching. Don't forget to like and subscribe.
