Cafe au Lait Blondies

Tom and I are both coffee addicts. Jeremy even gave me a brand spankin' new coffee press for my birthday last week, knowing full well how much I love my morning fix. So, in the midst of trying to catch up on my Christmas baking, how could I resist making coffee-flavored Cafe au Lait Blondies???

I have so many clippings and scraps of recipes, I can't begin to tell you where many of them came from. But the one with the blondie recipe is clearly from the departed Ann Arbor News, which evolved sorta into AnnArbor.com for which I write once-a-week. The printed recipe was adapted from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion.

The house smells like a coffee shop and bakery as these bake, which is always a fabulous fragrance to immerse yourself in! And what better treat to serve with a nice hot cup of coffee than more coffee???

Cafe au Lait Blondies

3 eggs
1-1/2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup butter, melted
2 cups unbleached flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 cup instant coffee crystals
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat the oven to 325F. Grease a 9"x13" baking pan.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs and the sugar until thickened. Add the vanilla extract and the butter. Stir in the flour and salt.


Remove 1-1/2 cups of the batter and set aside.

Combine the instant coffee and the cream; stir into the batter that's in the large mixing bowl, then spread the batter into the prepared baking pan.


Stir the walnuts into the batter that you'd reserved, then place dollops of it over the top of the coffee-flavored batter.


Swirl the batters together and smooth the top.


Bake for 30 minutes until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool completely, then cut into small cookies or larger-sized dessert bars.