Baking perfect blondies with NOMU MiniMakes Small Batch Baking is easy, and once you understand the basic ingredients and method, you can adapt the base recipe to create a whole lot of your own variations with consistently delicious results. Ready to become a master? Let’s go!

What are blondies?

First things first: we all know what brownies are, but what on earth is a blondie??

Brownies and blondies are like brother and sister in the grand baking tree. While they follow an identical method to make and share their fudgy-interior-chewy-crust characteristic, the defining difference between the two is that blondies don’t contain cocoa powder. This gives them a delicious vanilla-butterscotch flavour.

The Ingredients

Classic MiniMakes blondies don’t require any fancy ingredients or heaps of chocolate to make. In addition to your MiniMakes blondie mix, all you will need is:

• Melted butter: Using melted butter over softened butter gives blondies a fudgy interior rather than a cakey one. Make sure to melt your butter gently in the microwave – you don’t want it to boil or bubble excessively – and use it while it’s still warm to help dissolve the sugar. Go one step further and transform your melted butter into brown butter for extra flavour, like in these Brown Butter Milk Chocolate Chunk Blondies.

• Eggs: We use large free-range eggs for all our MiniMakes recipes. Make sure your eggs are at room temperature for baking to help with proper emulsion and even mixing.

• Add-ins (optional): Feel free to throw in any of your favourite add-ins to the blondie batter, like chopped pistachios, chopped chocolate or crushed Biscoff cookies.

Tip: Find the base recipe for classic blondies on your MiniMakes box.

The Method

MiniMakes blondie mixes come with two separate sachets for the sugar and dry ingredients and follow a very simple process to put together.

One of the key steps to making perfect blondies is to encourage the sugar to dissolve. This plays a role in the fudginess factor and helps to create a shiny surface during baking. Using butter while still warm helps to melt the sugar.

1. Prepare: Preheat your oven and line your chosen bakeware (see below) with baking paper – this makes it easier to remove the blondies from the tin. We love to bake our blondies using fan-assisted convection mode as this keeps the interior soft and fudgy. (Read more about How Oven Settings Affect Your Bakes).

2. Combine the melted butter and sugar: Whisk the melted butter and sugar together, making sure the butter is still warm to encourage the sugar to melt and dissolve. You want to mix fairly well until the mixture looks somewhat thick and goopy.

3. Vigorously whisk in the egg: Once you’ve added your egg, give the mixture a good whisk, about 1 minute, to further dissolve the sugar. You want to end up with a creamy and fully emulsified mixture that falls off the whisk in a thick ribbon.

4. Add the dry ingredients: Ditch the whisk and use a silicone spatula to gently fold in the blondie mix (sachet 2), and any add-ins if using, until it is all incorporated. The batter will become quite thick, almost like a soft cookie dough, but don’t worry! The thickness of the batter helps with the dense, fudgy texture we’re after.

5. Bake: Spread the batter into an even layer in your prepared tin and place in the centre of your oven. The pressure point here is to not overbake your blondies, as this will give them a dry, cakey texture. Remember that the recommended baking time may vary due to oven temperature fluctuations, so use it as a guide.

To know when your blondies are perfectly baked, the edges should be puffed and the interior cooked through but still soft and fudgy. The blondie should be lightly golden in colour with a firm crust and a skewer inserted into the centre of the blondies should come out clean. Don’t worry if the middle of your blondie sinks slightly after removing it from the oven – this is a sign that it is still fudgy inside.

6. Slice: We recommend cooling the blondie completely before slicing to give it time to firm up, otherwise you’ll end up with a gooey mess. For clean-cut edges, dip a large sharp knife in a jug of boiling water (or run under a hot water tap). Wipe the blade dry before cutting and clean it afterwards. Repeat this process until all the blondies are portioned.

Bakeware

MiniMakes blondie mixes can be baked in various shapes and forms for different variation recipes. Make sure to consider the change in baking time when chopping and changing your bakeware.

The Shiny Crust Saga

There are two schools of thought to help get a shiny surface on top of your blondies:

1. Dissolving the sugar: Whisking the sugar with warm butter first, and then vigorously again with the egg is thought to achieve that shiny meringue-like crust on top of blondies. Whisking well helps to dissolve the sugar while also incorporating small pockets of air, which work together to create a crackly shine.

2. Adding chocolate: Mixing chocolate in your blondie batter can also aid in forming a shiny crust. This is due to the presence of soy lecithin, a common emulsifier found in most commercial chocolate. Chopped milk chocolate or white chocolate (melted, grated or chopped) are best suited for blondie batter.

Food for thought: Getting a shiny surface on blondies can be a temperamental achievement. Some days you get it without even trying, and other days not so much. Although the sheen looks stunning, it’s important to note that it is purely visual and won’t make or break the final taste of your blondies.

Troubleshooting Guide

NO SHINEY CRUST: See our Shiny Crust Saga tips above to help create a shiny surface on your blondies.

CAKEY TEXTURE: Make sure not to overbake your blondies. Because of oven temperature fluctuations, set your timer for a few minutes less than the recipe states to make sure your blondies are on track.

SOFT WITH A RAW, GOOEY INTERIOR: While we love a fudgy centre, blondies should still be cooked all the way through. If your blondies look very gooey, bake them for a few more minutes to help them cook through and allow them to cool completely to help them firm up.

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