Salted Halvah Blondies

I’ve seen blondies made on TV many times, but I’ve never made them myself. I was excited to how the Salted Halvah Blondies differed from Claire’s Malted “Forever” Brownies, as I did not feel I was the most successful with that recipe. I was hoping I could improve on the parts that are similar between these two recipes with the blondies.

Similar to the brownies, I had to line a pan with foil. I still do not understand the purpose of this! It doesn’t work well with buttering the pan, and it does not make the bars easy to get out of the pan once it’s time to cut into the dessert. Again, I vouch it’s better to spray the crap out of the pan with oil and give it a good scrub when you’re done.

Aside from that frustration, this was an easy recipe. I ordered the halvah online, which I learned is a Middle Eastern candy. It was a honey flavored halvah, and had a nutty, robust flavor I’ve never tasted before. The consistency reminded me somewhat of angel food candy (in my family we call it fairy food), except crumblier. I never used tahini before either; I’m sure I’ve had it in hummus or vegetable dips before, but this was the first time baking with it.

I whisked together the dry ingredients and melted white chocolate with butter and tahini. After the chocolate mixture cooled, I added the sugar and eggs. The batter turned very glossy with a warm brown tone. I then added the dry ingredient mixture, along with the crumbled halvah. I likely crumbled it more than I was supposed to, but I don’t really like big crunchy pieces in bar desserts.

Once the finished batter was in the pan, I sprinkled on the sesame seeds and Himalayan salt and placed it in the oven for 25 minutes.

Like the brownies, I made sure to take them out when the middle was still a little jiggly as mentioned in Dessert Person. I let them cool for at least an hour before cutting into them…but once again, the centers were under baked! Plus, like the brownies, it was very tough to get them out of the pan and still look pretty with the foil.

While the middle sections could’ve definitely used another 5 to 10 minutes, the side pieces were perfection. The bite into these blondies was everything one would hope in chewiness. I could pretty much predict how these blondies would’ve tasted without the added twist of halvah and sesame seeds, so these flavors added some nice depth to the blondie. In the future, I hope I can figure out the right oven time for both the blondies and brownies in Dessert Person, but until then, I’ll enjoy the edge pieces!

If Claire shares a video on the Salted Halvah Blondies I’ll post it here!