Pumpkin Blondies

These Pumpkin Blondes are the ultimate fall dessert with nutty browned butter, warm baking spices and pumpkin. Loaded with white chocolate chips and toasted pecans, they’re chewy, crunchy, sweet and flavored with savory.

Making brown butter is a simple step that adds tons of flavor and helps achieve that signature chewy blondie texture. Once you master the brown butter, it all blends together easily without a mixer or special equipment.

What is a blondie anyway?

A blondie is essentially a brownie without the chocolate. It’s got that dense and chewy texture like a brownie, but it’s more of a caramel flavor with brown sugar, butter, and vanilla. Compared to brownies, blondies almost always come with added ingredients like chocolate chips and chopped nuts.

How to get the perfect blondie texture

The key to that signature blondie texture is lots of brown sugar and melting the butter. Or, in this case, nutty-scented browned butter.

For the pumpkin flavor, this recipe calls for just enough pumpkin puree to make it signature pumpkin. You don’t want too much, as the extra moisture in the squash can make blondies too cakey or too soft.

Brownie recipes often use lots of eggs to create a dense and frothy texture, but here we only use one egg since a lot of the moisture comes from the pumpkin puree.

The recipe does a lot of the work to get the perfect texture for you. So you just have to make sure you don’t over-mix the batter when you add the flour. Stop mixing once everything is evenly mixed and no dry stains of flour remain.

Canned pumpkin saves so much time

Canned pumpkin puree saves so much time compared to making it yourself and in my experience it lends itself to baking much better. Make sure you’re buying 100% pure pumpkin and not pumpkin pie filling that contains sugar, spices and other ingredients. I tend to use Libby’s 100% Pure Pumpkin. I find it’s not as watery as other brands and is a lot spicier.

Warm spices are essential for fall

Every year, around August or September, when I feel the nights and mornings getting colder, I rummage through my kitchen cupboard and rummage through my spice stash for all the warm spices that are essential for that time of year.

I like to make my own pumpkin pie spice in bulk so I have enough for the whole season. If you don’t feel like mixing your own spice blend, use your favorite store-bought blend.

Customize your Blondie mix-ins

While brownies are often plain, blondies almost always have mix-ins. And the best part is that mix-ins are so easy to customize. Feel free to swap out the white chocolate and pecans for any of your favorite flavors.

• baking chips: The recipe calls for white chocolate chips, but you can also try it with milk or dark chocolate, cinnamon chips, caramel chips, or even a mix.
• Nuts and Seeds: I’ve always associated pecans with fall. But roasted walnuts also go well with it. In keeping with the pumpkin theme, you could try sprinkling the top of the blondies with raw, unsalted pumpkin seeds just before baking to give them a little crunch.
• Dried fruit: Dried cranberries wouldn’t go out of place in these pumpkin blondes, or you could add some diced candied ginger.

For Blondie fans only

• Chewy tahini blondies
• Classic blondies
• Chewy almond blondie squares
• Lemon Mascarpone Blondies
• chocolate chip cookie bar