The Grit Blondies - Oh No!

This week I'm cooking from The Grit Cookbook by Jessica Greene and Ted Hafer. The Grit is a vegetarian restaurant in Athens, Georgia.

I have a confession...I love cookies. Bar cookies more specifically, so I'm always looking for a new recipe to rock my cookie-filled world. I remember walking into The Grit, seeing the dessert case, and seriously consider bypassing sustenance in exchange for a direct connection to a sugar concoction - sometimes I gave in. So surely The Grit Cookbook had a good recipe for Blondies.

I found what I was looking for on 103 of the cookbook. I read the ingredients and didn't see anything unusual so began my preparation.

I preheated the oven to 350 and greased my 9x13 pan. I melted the butter, measured the brown sugar, flour, baking powder, and eggs. Then I stopped.

Where was the vanilla? That's the one ingredient that, to me, makes a "blonde" brownie. The recipe didn't call for any, so I threw in about two teaspoons. I added in the cup of chocolate chips and some pecan pieces (no walnuts in the house.) The mixture looked good and tasted good.

The Grit Blondie Batter

I spread the mixture into the prepared pan and put them into the oven for the recommended 35 minutes. The house filled with the aroma of baking Blondies and I anticipated eating the entire pan. They looked beautiful fresh out of the oven, if a little extra golden. And then I took a bite.

Baked Blondies

These were sad Blondies, devoid of excitement. They were crumbly and crunchy. After they cooled, they were even hard to chew. I prefer a moist, chewy (but not crunchy) cookie. I did not gobble my way through the whole pan. Instead, I ate a few and the rest of them went down the garbage disposal drain. I ate doing that with food and feel so utterly wasteful. But with no gang of pals to help chow down the bunch of crunchy cookies, that was all I could think of doing at the time. Still, don't they look lovely?