Maple Miso Brown Butter Blondies

If you love maple syrup, you’ll love these maple miso brown butter blondies. They have maple syrup crystals folded into the batter and are perfectly balanced with brown butter and miso paste. They’re fudgy like a brownie, and unlike anything you’ve ever tasted before.

If you’ve been following along on loaves & such, you’ll know we love blondies here. The TikTok viral almond frangipane blondies and birthday cake blondies both have more than 100 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). And the more recent brown butter blondies are also getting a ton of love.

But when I posted the brown butter blondies recipe, some of y’all suggested adding miso paste. I love miso in desserts, and thought this was a great opportunity to combine three flavors that work so well together: maple, miso and brown butter.

And man oh man, these maple miso brown butter blondies are so good. They’re nutty from the brown butter, with sweet crunchy maple syrup crystals throughout and balanced with a complex and salty flavor from the miso paste.

This post is all about maple miso brown butter blondies.

Maple miso brown butter blondies

What is miso?

Miso is a paste made of fermented soybeans, salt, koji and rice or barley. It’s a foundational ingredient in Japanese cooking and commonly known for its important role in miso soup.

Miso is delicious — it’s salty and umami (one of the five basic flavors of food along with sweet, sour, salty and bitter). It’s savory and complex, and just a small amount packs a ton of flavor.

Okay so why would I put miso in a dessert? Is this actually… good?

When you add something categorically savory into a dessert, it’s going to turn some heads. But miso is excellent in sweets. It’s not like you’re turning your dessert into miso soup, it just means that you understand flavor and are comfortable using different ingredients to achieve a sweet-salty balance.

Have you read or watched Samin Nosrat’s Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat? If not I highly recommend. One great takeaway from the book is that saltiness doesn’t just have to come from literal salt. It can come from salty ingredients — parmesan, anchovies, bacon, you get the idea — that will add different flavor to a dish than just salt alone.

Adding a little miso to blondies brings an unexpected and delicious twist to a nostalgic dessert.

How to make maple syrup crystals

Maple syrup crystals are a solid form of maple syrup. They’re crunchy, and have less water than regular maple syrup, so the maple flavor is more concentrated.

To make maple syrup crystals, you boil maple syrup for 5-10 minutes until it’s foamy and thick (almost like honey) running off your spatula. You then pour the syrup on a rimmed baking pan that’s been sitting in the freezer. When the hot syrup hits the cold pan, the syrup will harden. You can then break up the syrup into maple syrup crystals.

Ingredients for Maple Miso Brown Butter Blondies

• REAL maple syrup (In this recipe, we make maple syrup crystals with the maple syrup so that there are crunchy maple bits throughout the blondies. This only works with real maple syrup!)

• Unsalted butter

• Brown sugar (preferably light, but dark works)

• White/light miso paste (not red)

• Eggs

• Vanilla extract

• All purpose flour

• Kosher salt or another coarse salt (you can omit if you only have salted butter)

• Baking powder

Tips for the Best Maple Miso Brown Butter Blondies

• Really mix your miso in well. You can do this by hand with a whisk, or with a hand mixer. Either way, just make sure the miso is fully incorporated so there aren’t un-mixed bits of miso in your blondies.

• Use quality vanilla and quality American-style butter. Since blondies have so much vanilla and butter, I recommend using the good stuff. My house butter is Cabot, since it’s high quality and not too pricey in our area. Find a butter that works for you!

• Properly measure your flour. Too much flour in blondies can make them cakey instead of fudgy. And too little flour won’t give them enough structure.
  • Meaure by weight: 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).
  • Measure by volume: 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 blondies are more forgiving because the brown sugar makes them so fudgy, but still keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t overbake.

FAQs

Looking for more recipes?

• If you’re in your blondies era, check out brown butter blondies, birthday cake blondies and almond frangipane blondies.

• If you’re jazzed on brown butter, try brown butter miso chocolate chip cookie bars or salted brown butter chocolate chip cookies.

If you make these maple miso brown butter blondies, please leave a rating and review below and tag me on Instagram or TikTok at @loaves.and.such!