Whiskey-Rye Blondies: or, The ingredients are nice, the instructions are faulty

A quick note before we get to the whiskey and rye: Millions of people in the US are losing food benefits. In fact, the Supreme Court just granted Trump's appeal to avoid paying food benefits, thus legally clearing the way for people to starve. 

If you are considering buying groceries to drop off at your local food bank, think about donating money directly to them instead. Food banks often buy food at bulk rates, so your money will feed more people than if you did the shopping yourself. And of course, the people in charge of food banks have a firsthand view of what foods are needed.

Right, on with the blondies...

We're giving the bourbon another shot before demoting it to lighter fluid.

Whiskey-Rye Blondies 200g unsalted butter (two sticks minus two tbsp) 400g light brown sugar (about 1¾ cups) 2 eggs 2 tbsp whiskey 1 tsp vanilla 1 tsp salt 250g rye flour (two cups plus two tbsp) 150g white chocolate chips, if desired (a heaping ¾ cup) 2 tsp golden-colored sprinkles, if desired Heat oven to 180°C (350°F, gas mark 4). Grease an 8"x12" pan or a 9" square. (the original recipe calls for a 3x2 decimeter pan.) You can also use a 9"x13" if you don't mind spreading the batter a little thin. Be sure you have the brown sugar measured and ready to go, even if you don't usually measure your ingredients before you start cooking. Put the butter in a large saucepan. Stir over low or medium-low heat until it is browned. Turn off the heat and immediately add the brown sugar, mixing well. (The sugar cools the butter enough to stop it from burning itself on its own retained heat, even though it will still be very hot.) Let the pot sit until lukewarm. Beat each egg in well, one at a time. Add the vanilla and whiskey with the first egg. Then mix in the rye flour. If desired, add the white chocolate chips. Put the batter into the pan. It'll be very thick, so you'll probably need to lightly spritz the top with cooking spray and then finger-press it into place. If desired, scatter sprinkles on top. Bake 20-25 minutes. A knife or toothpick in the center should come out without any hot batter clinging to it (a few clumps of hot brownie are OK). Note: the original recipe calls for 2 hectograms each of molasses sugar and golden caster sugar. But if you live on my side of the Atlantic and don't feel like going to specialty stores, light brown sugar will be a perfectly fine substitute for both of them. You can also use dark brown sugar for a stronger flavor. (Mal)adapted from the Irish Independent

This recipe starts with browned butter, something that came out of nowhere shortly after salted caramel exploded over all our desserts. Unlike bacon-infused everything, rampant cupcakes, or the tapas craze, browned butter seems to have some staying power.

We are next directed to "Whisk with all your strength to dissolve the sugar, and simmer over a low heat for about a minute. Add the whiskey and/or vanilla, and whisk until you have a smooth, glossy, dark mixture." I spent a long time (and I do mean a long time) stirring. Like Fanny Cradock, I thought of someone I really don't like so I take it out on the saucepan. But I didn't get anything better than a gritty sludge.

Incidentally, someone said I was old-fashioned for using wooden spoons. Are they really so outdated if you can still get them in the supermarket on the same aisle as the measuring cups and spaghetti strainers?

Just as I was about to take the pot off the stove and move on with the recipe, something caught my eye in there. I couldn't tell if things looked a little different or if I was being hopeful. But the sugar was actually dissolving, even if it took a long time to get around to it. I guess patience really is the key here. 

Assuming the butter is supposed to separate into a greasy slick on top, things were going exactly like the directions said. That happy state wouldn't last long.

Next, we are supposed to cool this for 5 minutes before adding the eggs. I set the pot on the countertop so the cold tiles could suck the heat right out of it. 5 minutes later, it was still searing hot.

This isn't the first time a brownie recipe has started out like candymaking before adding flour and eggs. But today's brownies did not want to go right. The brown sugar hardened into a solid rock in the pot. You might think I should have added the egg earlier when the sugar was still semi-soft, but it would have scrambled on contact.

I'll admit there's a chance that the recipe is correct and I messed up. But if so, I say it was due to faulty or ambiguous directions. For once I actually printed this recipe instead of copying it onto a notepad. So whatever went wrong on the stove had nothing to do with any transcription errors. Also, my kitchen scale is bilingual. So I didn't have the chance to make any mathematical errors when converting out of metric.

I thought that maybe things would improve after we mixed in the egg. And so, I gamely proceeded forward and got a sticky mess of gravel and sludge.

I was fazed but not resigned. The instructions tell us to "take up your whisk again. Whisk, whisk, whisk. Keep whisking until the eggs are thoroughly incorporated." I thought I'd speed up the process by putting a motor on the end of my whisk. After beating the everloving snot out of this mixture with an electric mixer, the sugar turned into slightly smaller gravel. You simply cannot dissolve three-fourths of a pound of hard candy into one cold egg. Also, half of the brown sugar was still a hard slab that had welded itself to the bottom of the pot. At this point, I tasted this to see if it was good enough to salvage. It was burnt and awful. Fortunately, I had not yet taken out the trash.

In spite of our failure (and because I hadn't put the bourbon away), I wanted to find out if the ingredient list was better than the directions. And so, I added the browned the butter as directed. Then I took it OFF the stove before adding the brown sugar. The mixture was still fiendishly hot, even though I hadn't tried to make ill-advised hard candy. But I tried a spoonful and it tasted divoon. I can see why browned butter is still with us long after its fad cycle should have ended.

Since I was ignoring the rhapsodic yet incorrect directions, I decided to wait until after adding the egg before beating anything "until smooth and glossy."

And now, we arrive at the whiskey! Even though we barely used a spoonful of it, the whiskey overpowered everything else in the batter. You'd think I dumped in half the bottle.

It was time to add our other title ingredient: the rye flour. It turned the batter a ghastly green. I had no idea rye flour was green until now. And there is simply no way for green and brown to mix into a pretty color. No wonder we are supposed to add white chocolate chips and then cover this in sprinkles. (I omitted both of those to find out if these brownies taste good without any help.) Even though things didn't look pretty, everything was going going exactly as they should. I even had to finger-press the batter into place like the directions say.

The brownies looked better after baking, but they still were a bit off-colored. You'll have to either cover them in icing or switch to candlelight if that bothers you. Or maybe you can use dark rye flour, which would probably turn them a prettier shade of deep brown.

The recipe says to cool these overnight before cutting, but we all know how much faith I have in the directions by now. I cut them right out of the oven while they were still very soft. The trick is to use a metal spatula instead of a knife, hold it vertically, press it straight down, then lift it back up and out before pressing it down again. You don't drag the brownies across the pan like you would if you swiped a knife across them.

I'm so glad I made the recipe twice so I could get it right once. These are so good. I even retracted my offer to let one of my more bucolic friends pour the rest of the whiskey over his next bonfire. 

These had the exact texture as the blondies from Mom's Betty Crocker cookbook. I even converted the ingredients out of metric so I could see if it was the same recipe with a rye swap. To my surprise, it isn't. The whiskey flavor was a lot stronger than I thought one spoon would be. And browning the butter gave them a wonderfully intense butterscotchy kick. 

In closing, I recommend this recipe a lot-- provided you keep the ingredient list and throw out the original instructions.