Team dinner with blondies.

I made dinner for fourteen people last night. Well, really I made enough for  more like twenty, but I was just glad I had enough! We had Eugene’s basketball team over for devotions & dinner. Tossed salad, spaghetti with cheesy marinara sauce, toasted buttery Italian Herb bread …

and…

wait for it…

blondies for dinner. It all turned out very well, too!

The recipe is straight out of The Complete America's Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook and I promise I only altered it ever so slightly {added butterscotch chips instead of white chocolate & didn’t include nuts}. They turned out  great – definitely a recipe worth keeping on the ol’ blog!

 

Blondies

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 1 1/2 cups firmly packed light brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup butterscotch chips

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. You’ll want to remember to melt your butter & let it cool.

Next you want to line a 13- by 9-inch baking pan with 2 pieces of foil {one length-wise and the other width-wise}. Spray the foil-lined pan with vegetable cooking spray.

Then, in a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder and salt together.

In another bowl, whisk the {cooled} melted butter and brown sugar together until combined.

Add the eggs and vanilla and mix well.

Using a rubber spatula, fold the dry ingredients into the egg mixture until just combined. Test Kitchen folks warn: Do not overmix!

Next, you want to fold in the semisweet and butterscotch chips {and the nuts if you have ‘em}.

Spoon/tip the the batter into the prepared pan.

Smooth the top with a rubber spatula.

Test Kitchen says you bake ‘em until the top is shiny and cracked and feels firm to the touch, for 22 to 25 minutes.

Place the pan on a rack and let cool completely (about an hour).

Cut into 1 1/2- by 2-inch bars.

Another nice fact about this recipe is that it makes 36 bars…plenty for a team of hungry lady basketballers.

On another note, we got a double dose of news yesterday. Let’s start with the bad – we didn’t get the house. Even though we offered higher than the asking price, apparently the other party offered “significantly higher than the asking price.” It’s so disappointing and hits like a load of cement, especially knowing we’re still stuck in the house-hunting process, but we’re trusting Him in this. We prayed all along that it would be His will, so His will is not this house. End of story.

Now on to the good news – Eugene got the job as a high school varsity head baseball coach at the school he graduated from here in our town. This is great news; he loves baseball & coaching baseball is a HUGE talent God’s given him, so to have this opportunity as a young first-year teacher is a complete blessing. He’s pretty pumped…which makes me pretty pumped.  :)

So we continue to ride the roller coaster that is our life. {Keep your hands in at all times!}