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photo credit: caryn74

So I’m checking out Anne’s Food and I come across a recipe she stole from the Smitten Kitchen called Blondies. I figured they were kind of like brownies but racist but actually they are halfway between cake and a cookie. Besides being just great desserts they are perfect for new bakers because:

1. The Ingredients Are Simple - The rarest thing in there is brown sugar.
2. The Procedure Is Simple - You slap it in a bowl, stir and bake. Nothing to rise, nothing to be ‘creamed’.
3. You Can Experiment - This is the perfect recipe to play with. The batter is basically a delivery mechanism for ‘other crap’, anything from chocolate chips to toasted almonds.

Ingredients:

• 1 stick butter(4 oz) melted photo credit: VeryBadLady
  
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 cup flour
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1-2 cups ‘other crap’

Procedure:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and grease up the smallest baking dish you have(like a 9′ by 9′).

In a bowl mix the sugar and melted butter. Then stir in the egg, salt, and flour one at a time. I add the vanilla last to minimize evaporation(it is alcohol based)

And yes you need to use real vanilla. Vanilla makes random flavors ‘play nicely together’. Blends them. And since the whole point of Blondies is random flavors, we really want real vanilla extract.

Then I add the ‘other crap’. This could be anything, chocolate chips, peanuts, peanut butter, mini-marshmallows, raisins, etc. This is great to experiment with because there’s no “bad” combination.

One of my favorite combo’s is:

• 1/2 cup sliced almonds
• 1/2 cup dried cherries
• 1 cup chocolate chips

So these are added last and stirred into the mix, then the whole bowl is dumped into the baking dish. Then throw the dish into the oven for 20-25 minutes. I usually pull mine at 22 to get the perfect ratio of gooey to chunky.

If you pull them a little too soon don’t worry about it. Just dig the pieces out of the dish and throw them in a Ziploc with 2 tablespoons of powdered sugar. Shake it up and let the sugar stick to the surface of the chunks. Pour that in a bowl and no one will notice if they’re a little underdone.

Easiest baking you’ll ever do.

I love bacon.

It’s the perfect synthesis of all your basic food groups, meat and fat. It’s welcome for dinner, lunch or breakfast. It’s great by itself, on the side or when wrapped around another food product. In fact, if you could wrap bacon around bacon you might create a nexus of awesome so great the world as we know it would end and an entirely new and perfect universe would open up. I love bacon.

Which is why when someone complains about it being too much work to make I want to claw their eyes out with a fork. They’ve put no effort into maximizing their bacon intake while minimizing the clean up. Making bacon is quick, easy and requires absolutely zero clean up.

All you need is a cookie sheet, a cooling rack and a cold oven. Layer the cookie sheet with aluminum foil(I told you no clean up) and put the cooling rack on top. You don’t technically need the rack, but it keeps the bacon out of it’s own grease and helps it brown up real nice.

Then just drop that bad boy in a cold oven, turn the temp to 400 and let it go. By allowing the bacon to heat up with the oven you’re giving it time for the fat to render off. If you’re one of those philistines who like soggy bacon, then you can pre-heat the oven and put the bacon in after. I wouldn’t do that though, because I love bacon.

How long do you cook it at 400? Well, that depends. About 2 minutes, but you have to be really careful because bacon goes from done to charcoal ribbons in about 30 seconds. Luckily this is the one case where you can keep opening the oven door and you won’t hurt a thing, so I say just keep an eye on it and don’t worry about the time.

What’s that? You’re one of those sad, divorced guys who only has a toaster oven and an I.O.U. where your dignity used to be? No problem, we can make that work too. I wouldn’t want to compound your misery by leaving you without bacon as well.

Just line your sad little toaster tray with foil, drape it with bacon and pop it in at 200 degrees. Once it reaches temperature bump it up 25 degrees every minute or so until you get to 350. By then it should be perfect.

Did I mention that I love bacon?