It’s officially my favorite three weeks of the year, weather-wise, in New York City. You can sleep without air conditioning and you don’t wake up with your hair slicked to the back of your neck. You can leave point A on foot and arrive dry at point B, without sweating through your clothes at all. The subway stations, while still gateways into an abysmal mess of bureaucratic incompetence, do not make you feel like you’re standing in the gateway of hell. There’s a crisp breeze in the morning, which has necessitated a sweater on early runs to the grocery store, a leaf here and there on the sidewalk and a general feeling, I think, of contentment.
There’s also, still, a lot of rhubarb in my freezer, and it’s only a (short) matter of time before it feels really unseasonable to be baking with it. So this past weekend I pulled out a stack of baking books and got to work making a rhubarb game plan. First up on the docket were these incredible, and incredibly easy, rhubarb blondies.
I love a good fudgy brownie (always fudgy, not cakey, please) but yes, I also like blondies (as long as they’ve got good caramel-y flavor and aren’t sickly sweet) and I also love white chocolate (yes, I know). It turns out that if you make blondies with light and dark brown sugar, chunks of high-quality white chocolate, crunchy slivered almonds, a generous sprinkling of crunchy sugar on top and a cup of ½-inch rhubarb slices, what you have on your hands is the perfect dessert. They’re not too sweet, they have impressive depth of flavor (thanks, dark brown sugar), awesome texture and a nice zing from the rhubarb. I’m in love with them and they’re going onto my short list for future rhubarb consumption.
There’s still a pound of rhubarb left in the freezer, earmarked for a rhubarb-blubeberry-rosewater pie that I plan to tackle next weekend. In the meantime, though, I’m on a blondie-meal replacement diet and it’s going to take a lot of discipline to not turn that remaining rhubarb into yet more squares of crunchy, caramelized goodness.
If you want to use frozen rhubarb, just make sure to defrost and drain completely before you bake with it.
Ingredients
- 1 cup sliced rhubarb (1/2-inch thick)
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- 1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
- 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
- 1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
- 2 large eggs at room temperature
- 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
- 1 1/4 cups flour
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/2 cup slivered almonds
- 1/2 cup chopped white chocolate
- 1 1/2 tablespoons granulated sugar
- 1 1/2 tablespoons demerara or turbinado sugar
Instructions
- Heat oven to 350 F°. Grease an 8x8-inch baking pan and line with parchment paper so that there is an overhang. Set aside.
- In a small bowl toss the rhubarb with the sugar. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the melted butter with the light and dark brown sugars until smooth. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, then add in the eggs and the vanilla and mix until smooth.
- Add in the flour and salt. Fold into the batter until just incorporated, then mix in the rhubarb-sugar mixture, almonds, and white chocolate until just combined.
- Pour the blondie batter into the prepared baking pan, using an offset spatula to smooth it into an even layer.
- Mix together the white and demerara sugars to form the sugar topping, then sprinkle over the top of the blondie batter. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until just set.
- Cool completely on a wire rack, then remove the blondies from the pan and cut into 16 squares (or 9 if you want very big ones!). Serve.
Notes
From Sister Pie
