I’ve been meaning to tell you about these blondies for a long time now. They’re from my friend Sarah Kieffer’s book, The Vanilla Bean Baking Book. She has a similarly titled blog called The Vanilla Bean Blog. These blondies are outrageously tasty. I feel like I’ve committed a crime in keeping them to myself. I could offer you a bunch of excuses. Like, her book got lost on its way to me last fall; I got a cold and couldn’t get my act together enough to share them in time for Valentine’s Day; I tried to save them for when you might be looking for an indulgent treat to share (Easter!); I came home from a long trip with jet lag and a ruptured eardrum. Cute, right?
I’m just plain guilty. Sarah’s book is full of beautiful baked treats, the kind that you make when the calories are easily justified by the special occasion and you’re looking for that I’m-gonna-die-this-is-so-good response. Sarah is a skilled baker and you just know her recipes are going to be stellar. This one certainly is. Since you all have come to expect healthier treats on my blog, I couldn’t help but make a couple of tweaks to her recipe by substituting whole wheat flour for the all-purpose, and coconut sugar for the brown sugar. I included her original ingredients in the recipe below as well, in case you’d rather make it as she designed. Either way, these chocolate chip pecan blondies made with a splash of coffee are worth every bite.
Every resource I’ve found online suggests substituting coconut sugar for brown sugar in a one-to-one volume ratio. For example, use 1 cup coconut sugar to replace 1 cup brown sugar. I’ve found that this doesn’t work so well. The moisture and sweetness levels in coconut sugar are lower than in brown sugar, when they’re measured by volume. The resulting baked goods turn out wonky, in one way or another. After some testing, I’ve realized that if you replace an equal weight of brown sugar with coconut sugar, your baked goods are far more likely to turn out well. Brown sugar is heavier than coconut sugar (1 cup packed brown sugar weighs 184 grams or 6.4 ounces and 1 cup packed coconut sugar weighs 144 grams or 5 ounces). So, for good results, you’ll need to use about 25 percent more coconut sugar by volume, for equal amounts by weight. I don’t believe this means you’re consuming more sugar since the weights are the same, but feel free to contradict in the comments.
