Tuesdays with Dorie: Crack Blondies

Dorie called these something like Chewy, Chunky Blondies, but that is a serious understatement. These candy bar-like lumps of all-American overkill are unquestionably crack blondies. And to think that until last night blondies were synonymous with lame in my mind. As my sister put it:

           "booooooooooooooooooo,
            blondies.
            yaaaaayyyyyyyy,
            blondie.
            (the band)."

I was in full agreement with this poetic little statement until around 10pm last night. Blondies always just seemed like a poor excuse for brownies, with all the butterfat and none of the joy. A comment on the TWD site the other day helped me begin my mental shift, by pointing out that blondies are just cookies in bar form. Conceiving of my creation as just a differently shaped chocolate chip cookied sorted me right out. Dorie describes these particular blondies as having more fillings than dough. I didn't have most of her suggested fillings (butterscotch chips, coconut) on hand, so I made a quick batch of toffee, and threw that in with chocolate chunks from one of those great big Trader Joes bars and some slivered almonds and Spanish peanuts. (Spanish peanuts, incidentally, are one of my more recent grocery finds. How I lived without them always on hand is hazy now.)

The toffee melted away, leaving the finished bars sticky, chewy, oozy at room temperature, and irresistable frozen. To top off the overkill, we ate them with noyaux ice cream that I made by infusing the cream with crushed cherry and apricot pits. The ice cream was subtle, but we could really taste the noyaux, in an almost citrusy aftertweak that went right up the nose. Lily, my boss at the bakery, thought it tasted something like marzipan.