BLONDIES!

I love fall.

(really, I love the "big" change of seasons - from the two cold seasons to the two warm seasons and vice versa - because I get to change up my home decor. Last weekend I replaced the pretty vase of white flowers on my kitchen table with my big wax pumpkins.)



I've been in a "baking" kind of mood lately. Last weekend, I treated my football-watching dinner guests to Jenna's AMAZING chocolate chip cookies. This weekend, I was grocery shopping and randomly decided to attempt another Eat Live Run recipe: BLONDIES.

These are particularly great for compulsive last-minute impulsive bakers like me, because they are very quick to make and take almost no preparation.

Unlike the amazing cookies, which require you to pull the butter out of the fridge hours ahead of time, so that it can softed, these call for melted butter. Which means that someone like me, who almost NEVER uses butter, can just pull the butter right from the freezer into the saucepan. I melted mine on low to medium heat and poured it right over the brown sugar.



Combined well and added my egg, vanilla, and salt:



And then stirred in the flour.



It had kind of a yin-and-yang effect with the dark brown sugar/butter/deliciousness mixture.



It was SO, SO easy. So easy, in fact, that when I popped the first glass pan into the oven, I thought to myself "you know, one stick of butter and half a package of brown sugar can't possibly be enough dessert for MY family. I'd better make a second batch." And I did.

My only drawback is that I did not HAVE an 8x11 pan, like Jenna did. I used a 9x9 pan instead, which required me to adjust the cooking time. A lot. Like, "oh, five more minutes" about four thousand times. After spending what felt like the entire afternoon in the oven, I finally got this.



and this.



They were a hit with my family. They were almost TOOOOOO rich for me - I needed a glass of milk or some nice cold vanilla ice cream to go with it, but alas, I had neither. Didn't stop me from eating two, though.



(And it probably wouldn't stop me from eating the entire bowl of raw dough next time. Confession? As much as I love to bake, I can really take or leave completed baked goods. I'm more of a savory person than I am a sweet person...but give me raw cookie dough any day. Salmonella? What's that?)