These browned butter blondies are as fudgy as a brownie, but with brown butter and vanilla flavor. They’re simple to pull together and PACKED with brown butter flavor.
If you’ve been following along on loaves & such, you’ll know I’ve become a bit of a blondie fiend. My TikTok viral almond frangipane blondies and birthday cake blondies have than 150 five-star reviews and so many of y’all have made them again and again (which is the best thing in the world to hear).
But when I posted the birthday cake blondies, some of you commented saying “yes, but what about with brown butter?” And oh my, if that wasn’t the best request out there.
These browned butter blondies are simply outrageous. They use an optional but recommended dried milk powder to get extra brown butter flavor – so they are definitely for the brown butter lover. They’re fudgy like a brownie but have this incredible vanilla, browned butter, caramel-esque flavor.
Get ready for the best browned butter blondies.
The Best Browned Butter Blondies
What are blondies?
For a long time, I didn’t really get blondies. Weren’t they just a cookie bar? And why would anyone want a blondie when they could have a brownie or a cookie? Thankfully I now have a full appreciation for blondies. And I think they are one of the more underrated desserts out there and have a lot of great flavor combination possibilities.
Blondies are basically the vanilla version of a brownie. They have the fudgy texture of a brownie and are satisfyingly rich and buttery. But instead of being all about chocolate like a brownie, blondies have a ton of vanilla extract for a deep and wonderful vanilla flavor.
Okay so what are browned butter blondies?
Browned butter blondies are blondies that are made with, well, browned butter. And what’s browned butter? It’s butter that’s been cooked long enough that the milk solids drop to the bottom of the pan and get nice and toasted. Those toasted milk solids add a ton of flavor to the blondies – they’re nutty, caramel-y and delicious.
But there’s a secret in these chewy brown butter blondies. I borrowed a genius hack from Butternut Bakery where you add dry milk powder to the butter as it browns. This increases the amount of toasted milk solids and all the wonderful toasted, nutty flavor they bring to a dessert. If you’ve ever made brown butter before, you’re going to freak when you see how many more toasted milk solids the milk powder adds. It really helps make these the BEST blondies.
Ingredients
- Unsalted butter (duh)
- Brown sugar
- Eggs
- Vanilla extract
- All purpose flour
- Kosher salt or another coarse salt
- Baking powder
How to make browned butter blondies
1. First you’ll brown the butter by letting it cook in a medium saucepan over medium heat, whisking in the dry milk powder toward the end to increase the amount of toasted milk solids. Transfer to a large bowl and stir in an ice cube (this helps cool down the butter and adds back some of the water that evaporates during the browning process).
2. Next you’ll mix together the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Once the brown butter is almost at room temperature, whisk in the brown sugar very well until there’s no separation, then mix in the eggs and vanilla extract.
3. Fold the flour mixture into the wet ingredients. Then spread the blondie batter into an 8×8 baking tin lined with parchment paper (so it’s easier to remove the blondies once they’ve baked).
4. Bake for 25-30 minutes until the top is set and the blondies are golden brown. Let cool for 10 minutes and dig in!
Tips for the best browned butter blondies
- Use quality vanilla and a quality American-style butter. Since the vanilla and butter flavors are so strong in blondies, I recommend using the good stuff. My house butter is Cabot, since it’s high quality but not too expensive where I live.
- Properly measure your flour. I always use a kitchen scale to measure my ingredients and include the measurements in grams in the recipe so you can, too. You can get a pretty cheap scale on Amazon (I used a $12 scale for years and now use a $28 KitchenAid scale). If you’re using a cup measure instead of a scale, first fluff the flour in its bag, then use a spoon to place it into your measuring cup. Level the flour off by scraping the flat edge of a knife across the top of the cup measure.
- Don’t overbake your blondies. An overbaked blondie is similar to an overbaked brownie — dry and cakey. These brown butter blondie bars are more forgiving because the browned butter and all brown sugar make them so fudgy, but still keep an eye on them in the oven to make sure they don’t overbake.
FAQs
You can leave it out and still get delicious browned butter blondies. But the dried milk powder gives the blondies a unique toasted flavor. If you are a brown butter fan, go with the dried milk powder – you won’t be disappointed.
It’s available in most grocery stores, or you can find it on Amazon here.
Go for it! You can add anything you’d like, but I wouldn’t go overboard with too many types of mix-ins so that you really appreciate the browned butter flavor.
If you somehow have any leftover, you can keep them sealed with plastic wrap at room temperature for 3-5 days or freeze for up to 3 months.
Looking for more recipes?
- If you’re in your blondies era, check out the TikTok viral birthday cake blondies and almond frangipane blondies.
- If you’re feeling some chocolate to balance your vanilla, try chocolate orange tart or salty fudgy brownies.
- If you want more recipes with browned butter, try brown butter miso chocolate chip cookie bars and salted brown butter chocolate chip cookies.
If you make these browned butter blondies, please leave a rating and review below and tag me on Instagram or TikTok at @loaves.and.such!
Browned Butter Blondies
9
large or 16 small blondies30
minutes25
minutes55
minutesThese browned butter blondies are as fudgy as a brownie, but with brown butter and vanilla flavor. They’re simple to pull together and PACKED with brown butter flavor.
Keep the screen of your device on
Ingredients
2 sticks (226 grams) unsalted butter
3 TBS. dry milk powder
1 1/2 cup + 1 TBS. (188 grams) all purpose flour
1 tsp. kosher salt or another coarse salt
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 1/3 cups (283 grams) light brown sugar
2 eggs
2 TBS. vanilla extract
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line an 8×8 tin with parchment paper (or grease it with spray or softened butter).
- First, we’ll brown the butter. Place the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. The butter is going to melt, then simmer, then foam. Swirl regularly throughout the process so the butter cooks evenly.
When the butter starts to foam, add in the dry milk powder and quickly whisk. Once the milk solids get brown on the bottom of then pan (1-3 minutes), remove from heat and pour into a large mixing bowl, making sure to scrape in all the toasted milk solids (aka all the flavor!). Stir in an ice cube to restore some of the liquid lost in the browning process and stop the butter from cooking. Set aside to let cool slightly before adding it to the sugar, otherwise the hot butter will melt the sugar. - In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt until evenly combined (mix longer than you think you should since everything’s the same color).
- Add the brown sugar into the large bowl with the browned butter and whisk well for 1-2 minutes, until there’s no separation. Whisk in the eggs and vanilla extract.
- Switch to a spatula and add the flour mixture into the wet ingredients. Fold just until there are no streaks of flour left, but don’t over-mix.
- Spread the batter in your prepared pan. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until the top is set and the blondies are golden brown. Let cool for 10 minutes, and dig in!
You can keep these blondies sealed with plastic wrap at room temperature for 3-5 days or freeze for up to 3 months
Should we use light or dark brown sugar for this?
Light! Good question – I’ll add that in the recipe 🙂
LOVE all the combinations of these blondies, the brown butter was such a good update!
can you leave out the milk powder ? like will it alter the recipe besides flavor ?
Hi Genesis – thanks for reaching out and great question! The big difference by leaving out the dry milk powder will be flavor – the blondies will still have that brown butter nuttiness, but not the same intensity. I also think the milk powder makes the blondies a little more fudgy, but they are so fudgy either way that I wouldn’t worry about that.
You need to add to this comment to let the butter cool before adding it to the sugar. I saw you say that in a comment on the instagram video after I already made them. Wish you had that in the recipe so I didn’t make that mistake
Thank you, G! Since there was a step in between I thought that was enough time for the brown butter to cool. I’ve adjusted the recipe to include this – let me know how it goes next time!
the blondies were delicious, but i had to cook them for more than an hr to get them fully done. When i baked them for 25 mins (at 350 degrees farenheit) like it says to, they were still batter. Not sure if it was my oven or the recipe. (Mby it was supposed to be celcius?)
hi Natalie, thanks for reaching out. We are indeed talking fahrenheit here! It sounds like your oven might not be at the temperature it says it is (this is the case unfortately with most ovens). I recommend getting an oven thermometer, preheat your oven to 350F, and see what temperature the thermometer says it’s at. Then going forward, you can set your oven so that it reaches a true 350F (ie, if your oven is actually at 325F, then you can set it to 375F to actually reach 350F.
Also, when you go to check on the blondies, be careful to only open your oven for a short time as otherwise you can let a lot of hot air out, which can make it take longer for them to bake.
I did and it was soooo goood!! I added 1 spoon of matcha! Not sure if I did something wrong, maybe because my butter took a long time to brown and evaporated too much water but the batter looked like cookie dough, so instead of a blondie, I got a big browned butter cookie hahah it was still so delicious, it was really hard not to devour the whole pan!
So happy you loved them, Rena! That’s possible that too much water evaporated. You also may have added too much flour. It’s SO easy to over-measure – check out the “tips for the best browned butter blondies” section for the best ways to measure. Thanks for commenting, Rena 🙂