Brown Butter Blondies Recipe | Self Proclaimed Foodie (2024)

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Brown Butter Blondies are a sweet and chewy dessert bar. Think of them as vanilla brownies.

This blondie recipe cooks a vanilla bean and walnut pieces in butter until the browned butter becomes nutty and delicious. Brown sugar makes them chewy and perfectly sweet. These brown butter brownies will satisfy any craving!

If you love brownies and bars as much as I do, you’ll really enjoy my banana bread brownies, pumpkin swirl brownies, beet brownies, frosted banana bars, and brown butter brownies.

Why this recipe is so good:

Brown Butter Blondies are my new favorite dessert bar. If you love brownies, these are basically a vanilla brownie. Because real vanilla bean is used, the vanilla flavor is true and intense in all the right ways.

It’s funny how you can take an awesome recipe like my brown butter brownies, make a few tweaks, and come up with something entirely different! Yet, they are equally naughty.

Any time you bake with browned butter, it adds a whole new level of flavor and goodness to your recipe. Brown butter in these blondies makes them more rich and nutty.

What is a blondie, exactly?

A blondie (also known as a blonde brownie) is a rich, sweet, and chewy dessert bar. It resembles the traditional chocolate brownie, but it’s basically a vanilla brownie.

One other notable change from a basic brownie, in addition to replacing the cocoa powder with vanilla, is the use of brown sugar. The brown sugar gives these a rich, chewy texture.

The main ingredients are flour, brown sugar, butter, eggs, baking powder, and vanilla. With any great dessert bar, you can also add walnuts or pecans.

Here’s how to make them:

• As with most dessert bar recipes, start by preheating the oven and preparing your pan.
• Start by making brown butter with the walnuts and vanilla bean (more details on that process below). Add the sugar and salt to the browned butter mixture and mix until combined. Let that cool 4-5 minutes and then add in the eggs and even more vanilla.
• To that mixture, you’ll add the flour and baking powder. Before you pour the batter into the pan, remove the split vanilla bean but be sure to scrape out as many seeds as possible from the pod.
• Bake for about 25 minutes and you’ll be in heaven!

Pro tips for perfect results:

• Instead of greasing the pan, I prefer to line it with parchment paper to make them easy to lift out.
• Do not leave your brown butter unattended while over heat. It can go from perfect to burnt in an instant. It takes a while to get it where you need it but will be ruined if left on a minute longer.
• Remove the blondies from the oven when the edges are starting to brown and the center no longer looks wet. If you think the center needs a little more, you can leave them in the hot pan once you remove them from the oven for another 5 minutes or so before you transfer them to a cooling rack.

This is no ordinary blondie recipe. They are brown butter blondies. If you’ve never cooked with brown butter, you should start.

What is brown butter?

Brown butter is formally known as Beurre noisette. It is a type of warm sauce used in French cuisine.

Brown butter can accompany savory foods including winter vegetables, pasta, fish, egg dishes, and chicken.

It is also used in making French pastry and can be used in a variety of desserts.

Brown butter is known for its rich, deep brown color, and the nutty scent and flavor, that occurs from the heating process.

How to brown butter:

Browning butter is super easy. It takes only a few minutes to make.

• Start with a good quality pan. I highly recommend using a stainless steel or enameled cast iron. Basically, you’ll want something with a light bottom so that you can see the color of the browned butter.
• You’ll get more even heating if the butter is cut into chunks. If you put in a large chunk, like an entire cube, it will take longer to melt.
• I highly recommend using a high quality butter. Pasture raised is always best. I used Kerrygold when I made these blondies. Admittedly, I would have preferred to use cheap butter because Kerrygold ain’t cheap, but it was all I had. I’m glad I ran out of the cheap stuff because these were outstanding!
• Heat the butter on the stove over medium heat. Swirl the pan occasionally to ensure even heating. The butter will melt, then foam, then the brown butter magic will happen.
• Once you see the dark bits starting to form and sink to the bottom, keep swirling and take care not to let it burn. Continue to cook until that wonderful nutty smell happens. Then remove it from the heat.
• I put my split vanilla bean and raw walnuts in the butter while it browned just to add to the magic.

What else can you make with brown butter?

Well, you can tell how much I love brown butter by the amount of recipes I’ve made with it! I already mentioned my super popular brown butter brownies, but here are a few more ideas. Both savory and sweet recipes included!

• Homemade Butternut Squash Ravioli with Brown Butter Sage Sauce, made with pasta dough from scratch and roasted garlic and butternut, tastes like heaven.
• Brown Butter Mashed Potatoes with the nutty and aromatic flavor of browned butter are the perfect side dish to any dinner.
• Creamy and healthy Pressure Cooker Butternut Squash with Sage Brown Butter is not only quick and easy to make, but it is the perfect fall season side dish.
• Brown Butter Banana Bars topped with a heavenly brown butter vanilla bean frosting make the perfect portable dessert to share with friends and family.
• Easy Brown Butter Pecan Fudge is full of the flavors of candied pecans and buttery caramel. This easy to make candy is the perfect dessert treat.
• Brown Butter Vanilla Bean Frosting is possibly the most rich, delicious, and flavorful icing you can make to top your favorite cookies and cakes.
• Pumpkin Spice Pecan Blondies are extremely similar except I swapped out the walnuts for pecans and added that pumpkin spice flavor to the top.

Did you make this recipe? Be sure to leave me a comment below to let me know what you think!

This recipe was originally published in February 2018 but has been updated with more information and cooking tips. Don’t worry… the recipe has remained unchanged!