Until recently, my definition of a brownie was a fudge-y chocolate cookie bar. More chewy than cookies and more dense than cake.
Blondies were the original brownies
Then, I learned that, historically, a brownie was originally a blondie. No chocolate. Made with flour, brown sugar, eggs and butter, the first documented brownie recipe, made with molasses, is from 1896.
Chocolate was not added to the mix until after the turn of the century. Chocolate brownies overtook the popularity of their paler older siblings and the term brownie became more associated with the darker and richer cookie bars. To distinguish, the original brownies came to be known as blondies.
The term blondie is not common in the Philippines. At least, not in the context of cookie bars. Blondie is either a foreigner with light-colored hair or a local with bleached and dyed hair. The pale brownies that North Americans call blondies are popular in the Philippines as butterscotch brownies.
Brownies are fudge-y cookie bars
If you scour the web for chocolate brownie recipes, you’ll find that they are generally divided into two groups. There are recipes for fudge-y brownies and recipes for cake-like brownies.
I belong to the school that does not consider cake-like brownies are true brownies. True brownies are cookie bars — more chewy than cookies that traditionally crumble and more dense than cake because no significant amount of liquid is added to the batter.
Cake-like brownie is just cake batter baked in a shallow pan, sometimes sprinkled with nuts and cut into squares. But just because the batter contains chocolate and the baked product is cut like brownies doesn’t make them brownies. Oh my goodness, the insults and invectives I can throw at cake-like brownies… but never mind.
Brownies and blondies are dessert bars
To further bolster the position that cake-like brownies are not true brownies, let’s talk about dessert bars. It’s the umbrella term for North American desserts that are more firm than cake but softer than cookies. One author calls them four-sided cookies. Blondies and brownies are only two of the countless dessert bars sold in bakeries and made by passionate home bakers.
Blondies (butterscotch brownies), brownies and dessert bar recipes
I adore butterscotch brownie in its purest form. No additions — not even nuts. I prefer baking them with dark brown sugar; other bakers use light brown to medium brown sugar. If you’re wondering if the color of the sugar affects the flavor and texture of butterscotch brownies, the answer is yes. Dark brown sugar contains more moisture so butterscotch brownies baked with it are more dense, softer in the middle and ultra chewy.
But much as I love basic butterscotch brownie, I also like to treat the batter as a base for fancier desserts.
Variants of blondies (butterscotch brownies):
- Food for the gods
- Boozy fruit-and-nut butterscotch brownies
- Butterscotch cheesecake brownies
- Blondies (butterscotch brownies) with peanut butter and chocolate chips
- Marbled butterscotch and chocolate brownies
The same is true about my devotion for fudge-y chocolate brownies. I love them by themselves but adding ingredients to them to modify their appearance, texture and flavor yields equally satisfying results.
Above: Chocolate chip cookie dough brownies and chocolate cheesecake brownies.
If you like dessert bars other than blondies and brownies and their various iterations, try these:
Top to bottom, left to right:
- Red velvet cheesecake bars
- Oats, nuts and chocolate bars
- Lemon cheese bars
- Chocolate and peanut butter bars
It’s definitely still hip to be square.
