These Honey Blondies are from America’s Test Kitchen Naturally Sweet, an excellent book with over 100 recipes featuring alternative sweeteners.
Honey Blondies
For the first recipe, I chose Honey Blondies because I almost always have honey on hand and they just sounded good. However, Naturally Sweet has loads of tempting recipes made with sweeteners such as Sucanet, coconut sugar, date sugar, honey and maple syrup. There's also a handful of recipes sweetened with just plain chocolate or no added sweetener other than fruit.
At first I was hesitant to pick up the book because I’m in the “I’d rather eat one bite of a sugary dessert than a full serving of reduced sugar” camp, so I just wasn’t into it. But then I started reading the book and it won me over, as the goal is to use the alternative sweeteners to make desserts that are just as good if not better. But there are rules and chemistry issues at play, because this is America’s Test Kitchen after all.
Science Behind Reduced Sugar Recipes
The book discusses the science behind reduced sugar recipes. For instance, how honey and maple syrup aren't always interchangeable, how using less sugar requires more flavorings, how using less sugar requires more liquid, and way more info than I have time to list. So let's just get back to the blondies.
Notes on Creating Honey Blondies
When America’s Test Kitchen tried making blondies by just replacing sugar with honey, the blondies came out cakey. In addition, the blondies were greasy – so fluffy, cake-y, and greasy all at the same time. Ick. But then they started experimenting and found that using extra egg yolks instead of some of the butter fixed the textural problem by giving the crumb some body and structure. Only 6 tablespoons of honey was enough to provide a good level of sweetness, but to make the brownies more satisfying and flavorful, the team used 4 whole teaspoons of vanilla, toasted the pecans and used a mixture of semisweet and white chips. At the end, they took each blondie from 25 grams of sugar to 13.
Here’s the recipe for those of you ready to try the recipe, but I highly, highly recommend this book.
Recipe
Naturally Sweet Honey Blondies
Ingredients
- 1 ¼ cups 6.25 oz/175 grams all-purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon baking powder
- 8 tablespoons 114 grams unsalted butter, melted and cooled
- 6 tablespoons honey
- 1 large egg plus 2 large yolks
- 4 teaspoons vanilla
- ½ cup toasted and chopped pecans
- 3 oz semisweet chocolate chips
- 3 oz white chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line the inside of an 8 inch square metal pan with foil. I use nonstick foil.
- In a medium bowl, combine flour, salt and baking powder.
- In a large bowl, whisk together cooled melted butter, honey, egg, egg yolks and vanilla. Whisk in flour mixture, then fold in pecans, chocolate chips and white chocolate chips. Pour into prepared pan and smooth the top.
- Bake on the center rack for 23 to 25 minutes, until slightly browned on the edges. Do not overbake. Let cool in pan for at least 20 minutes. Lift from pan and cut into bars or squares.
Anna says
Hi Cate,
Thanks for leaving me a comment on this recipe. I haven't made Honey Blondies in quite a while, but you are right in that if you reduce or eliminate the add-ins, the bars will most likely be kind of boring. It all depends on personal taste, but I probably wouldn't bother making these without the chips and nuts. You could try and see how it goes or maybe make a half batch in a loaf pan.
You might want to get a hold of this book if you can. This recipe has extra sugar from the chips, but there are a lot of other recipes that don't call for sugary add-ins and that do not have nuts. There's a crumb cake that might work, a granola bar recipe that you could easily make without nuts (it's sweetened with Sucanat) and a spiced shortbread sweetened with coconut sugar. The shortbread is probably a good one for your son! It's actually on the America's Test Kitchen website. Just do a quick search for America's Test Kitchen Spiced Shortbread. Good luck!
Cate Yee says
Based on the info in the introduction on the recipe card,"These are velvet-y and soft with richness from the chips and nuts, so don't reduce the add-ins." I am guessing that if I eliminate the nuts and chocolate chips that the recipe will not turn out. Due to health reasons my son can't eat nuts or the sugar in the chocolate chips.