Double Coffee Brown Butter Blondies

These blondies are a perfect lunch-time pick-me-up. The problem is, they're full of caffeine and hard to resist even at eleven o'clock at night!

Ingredients (for a 9x13 pan, or about 20 Blondies)

2 sticks (16 T) butter
2 1/4 cups flour
1 t baking soda
1/2 t baking powder
1 1/2 t salt
2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
3 eggs
1 T vanilla extract
2 T instant espresso powder
1/4 cup coffee liquor (Kahlúa or my favorite, Caffé Lolita)

Get your ingredients together before starting--it makes everything else go faster!

Step 1: Make Browned Butter

Put both sticks of butter into a saucepan over medium heat. Stir while it melts, then boils, and finally becomes a rich, frothy brown.

Step 2: Mix Liquid Ingredients

Pour the browned butter into a large mixing bowl. Add the sugars and mix well, then add the eggs, vanilla, and coffee liquor and mix again.

Step 3: Add Dry Ingredients

Combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, espresso powder, and salt in a sieve and sift them over the liquid. Fold the dry ingredients into the batter gently.

Step 4: Bake

Bake at 350 Fahrenheit for 35 to 40 minutes. These are very moist, so a toothpick will have some coffee-loaded blondie bits attached to it if you test them. As long as the pan doesn't slosh, that's okay. If you like a firmer blondie, add another five minutes to the bake time.