If you can’t decide between a brownie or a chocolate chip cookie for dessert, make these browned butter chocolate chip blondies. They’re fudgy like a brownie, but have the vanilla and caramel flavors of a chocolate chip cookie.
If you’ve been here a while, you know we have a bit of a blondie obsession. Blondies are some of the most-viewed recipes on the blog. And almond frangipane blondies (an almond croissant meets a blondie) and birthday cake blondies have gone particularly viral on TikTok and Instagram.
But one type of blondies recipe the blog has been DESPERATELY missing is a classic chocolate chip blondie. Enter these browned butter chocolate chip blondies – a great, easy blondie recipe.
Browned butter chocolate chip blondies are perfectly fudgy like a brownie. But they have flavors similar to classic chocolate chip cookies – a lot of vanilla, nutty flavor from the brown butter, caramel notes from all brown sugar, and POOLS of melty chocolate. They’re quick to make, require no chill time, and use all pantry ingredients – as Ina Garten would say, “what’s better than that?”
This post is all about browned butter chocolate chip blondies.
Chocolate Chip Blondies (with Browned Butter)
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 (some even call them blonde brownies). They have the fudgy texture of a brownie and are satisfyingly rich and buttery. But instead of being all about chocolate and using cocoa powder like a brownie, blondies are all about vanilla and use butter and a ton of vanilla extract for flavor.
What makes these chocolate chip blondies PARTICULARLY wonderful is if you’re a brownie lover, you’re going to get both the fudgyness of a brownie AND get your chocolate fix with warm melty pockets of chocolate. Not to mention these blondies are great with a tall glass of milk.
Ingredients
- Unsalted butter: Butter is a key flavor in blondies. Because of this, opt for a quality, American-style butter. I use Cabot because it’s a great quality butter that’s not too pricey where I live. We go with browned, melted butter (not room temperature) for particularly fudgy, chewy blondies.
- Brown sugar: We use all light brown sugar to keep the blondies SUPER moist and give them great caramel notes. Dark brown sugar is a bit too moist and rich here so opt for light!
- Eggs: Eggs add tenderness and a little lift to the blondies.
- Vanilla extract: Blondies are all about vanilla, right? So please please use real – not imitation – vanilla extract. Or the blondies gods will be very disappointed.
- All-purpose flour: Okay now we’re talkin’ dry ingredients. We use as much flour as we need to hold these suckers together, but not too much that they turn cakey instead of fudgy.
- Kosher salt or another medium-coarse salt: Salt enhances the flavor of pretty much everything. If you only have super-fine salt, go with 3/4 tsp salt so the blondies aren’t overly salty.
- Baking powder: We use baking powder to give the blondies just a little lift and keep them from being too dense.
- Semisweet chocolate bar or semisweet chocolate chips: I prefer a 60% cacao chocolate bar, but you can use either bar or chips! Chocolate chips will feel more classic and nostalgic. But a chopped chocolate bar gives you melty pools of chocolate throughout the blondies since they don’t have stabilizers like chocolate chips.
- Flaky sea salt (optional): These chocolate chip blondies don’t need flaky sea salt to top, but I usually do it.
Tips for the BEST chocolate chip 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. People have a tendency to over-measure flour, which can lead to cakey blondies. 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.
- Line your pan with parchment paper. This makes it a lot easier to lift blondies or any bar out of the pan to slice.
- Make sure your melted butter has cooled slightly before you add it to the sugar. If the butter is too hot, it will melt and dissolve the sugar. And when you mix the butter and sugar together, mix really well so that there’s zero separation when you add the next ingredients.
- 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. You want to pull when they’re a rich golden brown.
Blondies FAQs
You can keep blondies sealed with plastic wrap or in an airtight container at room temperature for 3 days, or freeze for up to 3 months. I love slicing and freezing blondies and warming them up whenever I want something sweet!
Yes, you can! You might want to reheat them slightly in the oven before serving so they’re warm and especially gooey/fudgy. But you certainly don’t need to!
Blondies are basically the vanilla version of a brownie. Both can be fudgy with a crinkly tissue paper top. But while brownies get their flavor from chocolate, blondies get their flavor from a lot of vanilla extract and brown sugar.
My blondies are always fudgy in the middle, but usually gooey in the middle when they’re still hot from the oven. You can let the blondies cool a bit if you want them to be fudgy instead of gooey. If you over-bake your blondies, they’ll turn out dry and cake-like instead of gooey/fudgy.
Sure! White chocolate chips, pecans, pretzels, go wild.
More blondies recipes
We are just a tad obsessed with blondies here. Our blondies recipes have more than 10M views on Instagram and TikTok and more than 300 five star reviews on the site. Needless to say, you can’t go wrong with any of the below blondies recipe!
- Almond frangipane blondies: My favorite recipe of 2023 and the most-viewed on the blog. These are as if you combined almond croissants and blondies. Simply incredible.
- Fudgy bakewell blondies: An evolution of frangipane blondies, these are blondies swirled with almond frangipane and juicy raspberry jam. They’re as if you combined blondies and a bakewell tart, or blondies and an almond raspberry croissant.
- Browned butter blondies: If you’re a browned butter fiend, these are for you. They use dry milk powder to get EXTRA brown butter flavor and are just out of this world.
- Birthday cake blondies: If you want to make a birthday cake for a friend but don’t want the stress of making a birthday cake, you gotta make the TikTok-viral birthday cake blondies.
- Maple miso brown butter blondies: These blondies have miso paste and shattering crystalized maple syrup. They’re sweet and umami and truly unique.
If you make these chocolate chip blondies, please leave a rating and review below and tag me on Instagram or TikTok at @loaves.and.such!
Browned Butter Chocolate Chip Blondies
9
large or 16 small blondies25
minutes25
minutes50
minutesIf you can’t decide between a brownie or a chocolate chip cookie for dessert, make these browned butter chocolate chip blondies. They’re fudgy like a brownie, but have the vanilla and caramel flavors of a chocolate chip cookie.
Keep the screen of your device on
Ingredients
1 cup (226 grams) unsalted butter
1 3/4 cups (210 grams) all purpose flour
1 tsp. kosher salt or another medium-coarse salt (reduce to 3/4 tsp if you only have fine table salt)
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 1/3 cups (283 grams) light brown sugar
2 eggs
2 TBS. vanilla extract
4 ounces (2/3 cup) chopped chocolate bar or chocolate chips
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line an 8×8 tin with parchment paper (or grease it with spray or butter).
- First, 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.
After 6-10 minutes, the milk solids from the butter will drop to the bottom of the pan. They’ll start out looking like white specks and will then brown. Once they brown, pour the butter into a large bowl, making sure to scrape in the brown bits from the bottom of the saucepan (this is the brown butter flavor!).
Stir in one ice cube to help cool the butter and restore some of the liquid lost when browning the butter. Set aside to cool slightly so it won’t melt the brown 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).
- Once the browned butter is cooled slightly, add the brown sugar. Whisk well for 1-2 minutes, until there’s no separation between the butter and sugar. Whisk in the eggs and vanilla extract.
- Switch to a spatula and add the flour mixture into the wet ingredients. When there are just a few streaks of flour left, fold in your chopped chocolate or chocolate chips. Don’t over-mix.
- Spread the batter in your prepared pan. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until the blondies are golden brown and the top is set. Let cool for 20 minutes, and dig in!
You can keep these blondies sealed with plastic wrap at room temperature for 3 days, or slice and freeze for up to 3 months.
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