It’s always interesting to find out facts, and we are obviously curious about baked goods. Most of us love a baked good, but do many of us actually know where they came from or how they were created? Well, as we recently launched out blondies as part of our brownie range, we wanted to know a little bit more about them.
There are various names these confectionary items go by; they are most commonly known as blondies but they can also be called blonde brownies or butterscotch brownies. It’s understood that much like the brownie, the blondies originated in the USA. However, who invented these tasty snacks is a bit of a mystery.
We do however, know who published the first recipe for brownies, and it was published in 1896. But this brownie recipe contained no chocolate, so it was actually more akin to the blondies we know today.
Unlike cakes, because blondies are classified as finger foods, they fall under the category of a cookie bar. And it’s believed that blonde brownies actually predate chocolate brownies by about 10 years. And before chocolate brownies came about, blondies were call brownies or molasses brownies... which to be honest is a bit confusing. And to make it even worse, Fanny Farmer, who published the first brownie recipe went on to publish blondie and brownie recipes in her 1906 book, but they were both called brownies.
The original name of brownies for these treats came from the elfin characters of brownies that were popular in books and folk stories. It wasn’t until the mid 1970s, or early 1980s that the terms blondie and butterscotch brownies actually seemed to appear. Although, we don’t think it has anything to do with the Atomic band Blondie.
You may be wondering to yourself at this point, what are the main differences between a blondie and a brownie? Well, there’s a couple of things that means we can categories these treats separately. The first is the obvious point, blondies don’t really taste of chocolate, they have more of a vanilla profile. This is obviously due to the lack of the cocoa or chocolate; although they may contain white chocolate on occasion, the leading flavour should be vanilla.
The second difference is the type of sugar that’s used in the recipes, typically brownies use white sugar in the recipes, the sugar helps to create the fudgy consistency and texture for the brownies when mixed with melted butter. Blondies however, use brown sugar, this is why they can sometimes be called butterscotch brownies, as the brown sugar helps provide a caramel flavour to the confectionary. Thinking about it you would have thought it would be the other way around in some ways...
That’s pretty much the main history points for the blondie. Now that you know more about them, why not have one? We now have blondies available for delivery across the UK, alongside our brownie range.