Dulce de Leche Blondies

Dulce de Leche Blondies

adapted from Stella Parks
Finally, the chewiest, gooiest, most butterscotch-y bar cookie of your dreams. This is your lifetime Blondie. Period.
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Cook Time 45 minutes
Dulce de Leche 1 day
Course Dessert
Servings 32 2 x 2" bars

Equipment

  • Kitchen Scale (optional but HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR ALL YOUR BAKING)
  • Stand Mixer or Hand Mixer
  • 9-inch x 13-inch x 2-inch aluminum baking pan OR (2) 8-inch x 8-inch x 2-inch pans
  • Parchment paper
  • Stock pot, at least 5 qt. (only needed if making Dulce de Leche)
  • Stick Blender, Regular Blender, or Food Processor (optional for making Dulce de Leche)

Ingredients
  

Blondies

  • 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour (11.5 oz)
  • 2 sticks unsalted butter (8 oz)
  • 1 ¼ cups white chocolate or caramelized white chocolate (7 oz)
  • 2 cups light or dark brown sugar, packed (16 oz)
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar (3.5 oz)
  • 1/2 cup malted milk powder (2 oz)
  • 1 ¼ tsp kosher salt
  • 6 eggs, large and straight from fridge
  • 1 tbsp pure vanilla extract

Dulce de Leche

  • 1 gallon whole milk
  • 4 cups granulated sugar
  • 1 ½ tsp baking soda
  • 2 tsp kosher salt
  • 1 tbsp pure vanilla extract

Instructions
 

Blondies

  • Caramelize the white chocolate (optional): Preheat oven to 250°F. Weigh out 12 oz of white chocolate and chop into pieces approximately the size of a quarter. (In order for the caramelization to work, you must use high quality white chocolate such as Valrhona Ivoire. White chocolate baking chips of any kind will NOT work.)
  • Evenly layer the chopped white chocolate in either a glass baking dish or on an aluminum baking sheet with parchment paper. Bake the chocolate in 10 minute intervals. At each interval, remove the chocolate from the oven, stir it and re-spread it evenly, then return it to the oven. After 60-70 minutes, the chocolate will be the color of peanut butter and smell buttery and toasty. Weigh out 7 oz of the caramelized chocolate into a medium bowl and set aside. The remaining chocolate can be kept in the fridge for at least a month.
  • Prepare the pan(s): Preheat the oven to 350°F and move the rack into the middle. Lightly spray the pan(s) with nonstick spray. Line the pan with parchment paper so that the paper comes up at least 3 inches above the lip of the pan on all 4 sides. You will use the paper edges to lift the blondies from the pan, once they are cooled.
  • Brown the butter: In a small saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. The butter will sputter and foam. Keep a close eye on it. As it begins to brown, carefully stir it with a wooden spoon to scrape all the brown bits from the bottom of the pan. When the butter is a golden brown, remove it from heat. It will continue to cook and become a darker brown. Scrape the pan a few more times to make sure the brown bits don't stick to the bottom. Let the butter cool for 5 minutes, then pour it over the (caramelized) white chocolate and gently whisk to combine.
  • Mix the Blondie batter: Combine both sugars, the milk powder, salt, eggs (straight out of the fridge!), and vanilla in the bowl of your stand mixer. Use the whisk attachment to whip the mixture on medium-high speed for a full 8 minutes. The mixture will increase in volume and become light and fluffy. Stop the mixer, drizzle in the butter and chocolate mixture, and whip on low to combine. Fold in the flour by hand to avoid over mixing. Make sure there are no streaks of flour remaining.
  • Pour the batter into the prepared pan(s). If using the dulce de leche, weigh out 16 oz and warm it in the microwave for 30 seconds. Drizzle it evenly over the entire surface of batter. Pull a butter knife or offset spatula through the batter to marble the dulce de leche. Bake until the blondies are just barely firm in the middle - 35-45 minutes, depending on the pans used and your oven. Cool for 1 hour and then use paper "handles" to remove from pan. Allow to cool completely before cutting into squares. Drizzle with more of the dulce de leche and sprinkle with Maldon sea salt, if desired.

Dulce de Leche

  • Pour the entire gallon of milk into the stock pot, add the sugar, and stir to combine. Set the mixture over high heat and keep an eye on it so you can catch it before it boils over. This should take 20-30 minutes. Meanwhile, mix the baking soda with 2 tbsp warm water and set aside.
  • Once the milk comes to a boil, remove it from heat. Slowly add the baking soda mixture, just 1/2 tsp at a time, waiting 30 seconds between each addition, so that it won't boil over. Give it a very gentle stir (again, to avoid causing the milk to boil over) and immediately return to medium heat.
  • Allow the milk to simmer, uncovered, without stirring for at least 3 hours. You can certainly cook the dulce de leche at a boil in less than 2 hours. Cooking it at a lower temperature, however, will give you a deeper, more complex flavor.
  • Once you hit the 3 hour mark, stay close to the pot. The dulce de leche should be a deep brown color and have reduced by over half. Watch for it to start boiling slowly, like molten lava. This is the point where you have to start stirring. Use a wooden spoon to stir continuously, for 10-20 minutes, constantly scraping the bottom of the pan, to allow the dulce de leche to continue to thicken without burning.
  • The dulce de leche will be properly thick when: 1. As you quickly scrape the pot, you can see the shiny metal bottom for a flash of a second. 2. It coats the back of the spoon without running off. 3. It is a very dark brown, almost the color of melted dark chocolate.
  • Turn off heat and allow the dulce de leche to cool for 10 minutes before pouring it through a strainer into a medium bowl. You should have between 5 and 6 cups. Stir in the vanilla and salt and adjust to taste. For an extra smooth product, run a stick blender through it for 30 seconds. If you don't have a stick blender, a regular blender or a food processor will work just fine. Pour the dulce de leche into heat-proof containers and allow to cool on counter completely before refrigerating. Dulce de leche will keep well for several months in the fridge but there's not much chance it will be around for long!
Keyword American, American desserts, bar cookies, blondies, bravetart, caramelized white chocolate, chocolate chip cookies, dulce de leche, stella parks, white chocolate

My gripe with your standard blondie recipe is that it seems like an afterthought. Often it’s not much more than glorified chocolate chip cookie dough—add a few more eggs, reduce the flour, et voilà, Blondies!  The resulting bake is likewise disappointing: Sweet, bland bricks of sawdust, punctuated by the occasional chocolate chip or walnut.  No thank you.

It wasn’t until I came across White Chocolate Butterscotch Blondies by Chef Stella Parks that I was tempted to try again.  Chef Parks is the baking genius behind such landmark Serious Eats articles as Double-Strawberry Cake Recipe, A Crash Course in Mastering Pie Dough, and How to Make Tart, Extra-Silky Lemon Bars and the author of James Beard Award-winning BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts.  Bravetart is a celebration of American pastries, offering unfussy, full-proof techniques for creating our most nostalgic treats.  Everything I’ve baked out of this book has been pure gold but it’s Chef Parks’ ‘Blondies recipe that I keep coming back to again and again.

This is the blondie my heart has always wanted but was afraid to hope for: All the gooey-ness and chewy-ness of the best brownie you’ve ever eaten, but with the toasty, butterscotch-y complexity of…the best toasty, butterscotch-y thing you’ve ever eaten?  This is what I’m saying, it’s beyond words how good these things are.  Don’t take my word for it, though.  BAKE THEM.  (And then hide them because you will eat them all—and if you don’t, your family members WILL.)

I’ve gilded the lily here by swirling in 2 cups of homemade dulce de leche.  Yes, I’m the crazy person who makes dulce de leche from scratch.  I’ve been tweaking this recipe for a decade and it’s become one of my signatures.  I put it into and on top of everything:  Ice cream, pastry cream, buttercream, brownies, sandwich cookies, cakes, you name it.  It’s my most requested flavor (back when I used to bake for $) and better than any store-bought variety I’ve ever tried, though I do say so myself.  So even if you don’t make it for this recipe, I encourage you to try it out at some point.  It’s really lovely.

Since dulce de leche is denser than blondie batter, it will always sink to the bottom, creating the darker caramel layer you can see in the photos.  As you can also see, I drizzled more on top and added a few pinches of Maldon sea salt. I was super happy with this result but if you’re not interested in the dulce de leche, just skip it.  You can also purchase jars of the stuff in many grocery stores and save yourself quite a bit of time—though, (clears throat), as I said, it’s not quite as good as homemade. 😉 

I’ve made these blondies several times now, so I feel qualified to offer a few tips to ensure your success:

  1. Caramelize the white chocolate.  You don’t have to but do it anyway.  Yes, it takes extra time—a whole hour in fact—but it’s worth the investment.  Do the dishes, go through the mail, read a book in the 10 minute increments between stirring sessions, and you won’t be mad about the time you had to spend on it.  The greatness of this recipe relies, in part, on the layering of complex flavors.  Caramelized white chocolate is sooooo much more interesting than plain white chocolate—it’s salty, buttery, toasty, nutty, caramel-y—seriously, it’s GOOD. 
  2. Brown the butter.  Again, you don’t have to but do it anyway.  The smell of brown butter alone is just heaven and it will add incredible depth of flavor to your blondies, believe me!
  3. The malted milk powder, ok, so this is a specialty thing that most of us don’t keep around.  You can get it on Amazon for $15, it will keep forever, and you can make at least 10 blondies recipes out of it.  I’ve baked the blondies both with and without the milk powder and they are still quite special without it.  The malted milk imparts that toasty, umami quality that makes the blondies more savory, which I really enjoy.  That said, leave it out if you’re not into the malted flavor.
  4. Invest in a quality, light-colored, aluminum baking pan.  This type of pan will conduct heat evenly and keep the outer crust of your baked good from browning too quickly before the interior is fully baked.  I really like the Fat Daddio brand.  If you take care of it, you will have the pan for life!