Buttermilk Blondies

It's hard to beat blondies. Cake + chocolate chips. Buttery. Not quite as dense as brownies. Better crumb. Did I mention chocolate?

They may also have been the first brownies. That sort of culinary trivia is hard to decipher, so many competing claims without proper documentation--but it appears that the "original" recipes for these bar cookies were for what we now call "blondies." Later, cocoa was added, then the chocolate was melted, and so came about the brownie.

No matter. It's a great American treat. Especially with buttermilk. And one little secret Bruce threw in.

Here come the blondies.

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Buttermilk Banana Bread

When Bruce made butter the other day (you can find it here), I said he was left with some milky liquid in the bowl after the fat had globbed together into yellow bliss. That liquid, of course, was buttermilk. No, not the cultured stuff from the grocery store. Instead, this was old-fashioned buttermilk, the liquid remnants of butter making, only slightly sour and very flavorful. You can see it in that jar to the side of the other ingredients on the counter.

As you may know, we created this blog to preach our passion: real food, nothing fake, no hyped-but-faux ingredients. We've slowly been building a storehouse of recipes that don't use any processed fare.

This buttermilk certainly fits the bill. It's part of a new baking strategy around our house: only raw sugar like turbinado or muscavado, better flavor and better heft in batters; flavorful fats like avocado oil and walnut oil that beat those processed, tasteless oils hands down; and dedicated, delicious treats, made without anything fake in the mix.

Could you use regular, cultured buttermilk, the kind most often found at the store? Of course! Is it real food? Yes with a caveat. It is a bit of a fake-out, but not a chemical one; so we're OK listing it among the real food ingredients on this blog. But that said, use the low-fat version. It'll have more of the texture and taste of the homemade, old-fashioned stuff. Let's get cooking!

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