Gourmand Equivalents: Cuir Beluga and Brown Butter Blondies

Sometimes all you want is something sweet and embracing but then you have that one other need that is so opposite of the other two, sophisticated, that you are left with a conundrum of what to do, and to top it all off you want it easy. I had seen the recipe for Brown Butter Blondies a few weeks ago and had been agonizing about wanting to make them but could not with a right mind turn the oven on in 100 degree weather to bake a dessert that screamed Autumn to me, so I waited the weather out.

The idea of brown butter in desserts has always intrigued me, the added nuttiness and depth to already delicious butter made brown butter something to fantasize about, so finally the weather changed, and I tried the recipe. The recipe could not be simpler or easier and the results were phenomenal, while sweet the blondies were not overly sweet, the vanilla melded with the molasses of the dark brown sugar to create a heady fragrance, the pecans added there own sweet nuttiness, while the blondies themselves a beautiful caramel color. While children would eat these with joy, I could not help but realize that these are probably far more delightful for adults. As I sat there eating a blondie I realized that it reminded me of a fragrance, Guerlain's Cuir Beluga, while Guerlain may hype up the scent as the most elegant of things, and it is elegant what they fail to add is that Cuir Beluga is also very much a dessert scent, vanilla and amber with just the tiniest touch of leather to keep it from becoming vanilla pudding. The Leather and Brown Butter act out the very same role in these creations they make them adult desserts.

The recipe for Brown Butter Blondies can be found here:

http://blueridgebaker.blogspot.com/2009/09/brown-butter-blondies.html

image provided by artnet.com

image: The Muse of Autumn by Delphin Enjolras