Sunday Supper: Cinnamon Apple Blondies

There is a specific moment every September when the air shifts and the kitchen starts asking for something different. The corn dips and potato skins of early football season still have their place, but something in the back of the mind starts pulling toward cinnamon, apples, brown sugar, warm ovens, and the kind of dessert that makes the whole house smell like the best version of the season.

That moment is here. Fall is officially on the calendar, and the Larder is marking it with Cinnamon Apple Blondies, which are exactly what they sound like: a rich, chewy blondie base folded with brown-sugar-tossed apples and enough cinnamon to make the whole pan smell like an autumn afternoon. They only take 10 minutes to put together and 40 minutes in the oven. They are the kind of dessert that disappears from the counter faster than anything more complicated would.

White chocolate chips are optional in this recipe and genuinely wonderful if you use them. They melt into the batter and add a creamy sweetness that plays beautifully against the cinnamon and apple. Don't skip them if you have them on hand.

The Apple Question

Not every apple is a baking apple, and this is worth knowing before the trip to the grocery store. A Gala apple, lovely for eating out of hand, turns soft and nearly textureless in the oven. What you want for a blondie is an apple that holds its shape under heat and contributes some tartness to balance the sweetness of the brown sugar batter around it.

The best choices for this recipe:

• Honeycrisp: The most widely available good baking apple right now, crisp and sweet-tart with enough structure to stay present in the finished blondie. If you can only find one variety, find this one.

• Braeburn: A slightly spicier, more complex flavor than Honeycrisp that holds up beautifully in the oven. A great choice if your market carries them.

• Pink Lady: Firm, tart, and slightly floral. Excellent in baking and a nice contrast to the sweetness of the blondie base.

• Jonagold: A cross between Jonathan and Golden Delicious, with a honey-sweet flavor and enough firmness to work well here.

Peel the apples before chopping. The skin does not soften enough during the bake time to be pleasant in a blondie, and small pieces of unpeeled apple are a texture surprise your guests may not be expecting.

A Few Things Worth Getting Right

Blondies are forgiving by nature, but a couple of details matter more than they might seem:

Room-temperature ingredients. Both the butter and the eggs need to be at room temperature before they go into the bowl. Cold butter doesn't cream properly with brown sugar, and cold eggs can cause the batter to seize slightly when added. This is a 15-minute fix: Pull both from the refrigerator an hour before you start, or set the butter in a warm spot on the counter if you're working faster than that.

Do not overmix. The flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt go in with a gentle fold, not a vigorous stir. Overmixed blondie batter develops gluten and produces a tough, chewy result rather than the tender, dense crumb that makes a good blondie worth eating. A few small streaks of flour remaining when the apples go in are fine. They'll disappear in the fold.

The toothpick test on blondies is different from the one used for a cake. A toothpick that comes out mostly clean with a few moist crumbs is the target. A perfectly clean toothpick usually means the blondies have gone a minute or two past their best texture. Pull them when they look set at the edges and still slightly soft in the center. They will firm up as they cool, and the center of a properly baked blondie should be dense and fudgy rather than cakey.

Cinnamon Apple Blondies

• Prep time: 10 minutes
• Cook time: 30 to 40 minutes
• Serves: 9

Ingredients

• 2 sticks butter, softened at room temperature
• 1 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons light brown sugar, packed, divided
• 2 eggs, at room temperature
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground cardamom, optional but highly recommended
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 large apples, peeled and chopped
• 1/2 cup white chocolate chips, optional but recommended

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line a 9x9-inch square baking pan with parchment paper.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the softened butter and 1 1/2 cups of brown sugar. Whisk until smooth and lightly fluffy.

Add the eggs and vanilla extract and continue whisking until smooth and fully combined.

Add the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, cardamom, and salt. Gently fold until the batter is smooth, taking care not to overmix.

In a small bowl, toss the chopped apples with the remaining 2 tablespoons of brown sugar. Gently fold the apples and white chocolate chips, if using, into the batter.

Transfer the batter to the prepared baking pan and bake until the top is lightly browned and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out mostly clean with a few moist crumbs, approximately 30 to 40 minutes. The blondies will continue to set as they cool.

Allow to cool completely to room temperature before slicing and serving.

Cooling Is Not Optional

This is the hardest part of the recipe and the most important. A blondie cut too soon falls apart, looks underdone, and doesn't slice cleanly. The pan needs to cool completely before the knife comes out, which takes about an hour at room temperature. The texture of a properly cooled blondie is dense, slightly chewy at the edges, and soft in the center. These delicious bites are absolutely worth the wait!

If patience is in short supply, the pan can go into the refrigerator after 20 minutes at room temperature to speed up the cooling. Chilled blondies slice very cleanly and are genuinely excellent served cold or at room temperature. Either way works.

Good for the Game Too

The game-day table has been running savory all season: jalapeño poppers, potato skins, corn dip, spinach-artichoke dip. All of it has been excellent. But a good football Saturday also deserves something sweet on the counter, and a pan of Cinnamon Apple Blondies is the right call for exactly that moment when the second half starts and someone needs something other than another chip.

They hold at room temperature all day, they cut cleanly into squares that are easy to grab without a plate, and the cinnamon-apple smell coming from the kitchen while they bake is the kind of thing that makes a house feel like the right place to watch a game. Pull them out of the oven before kickoff, and they're ready by halftime. That's the move.

While they're baking, head over to Beat the Doc and bookmark it for Tuesday, when the weekly pick sheet drops. Dr. Morton releases his college football picks every Tuesday ahead of Saturday's games, the leaderboard updates throughout the season, and there is a $600-plus Lynchburg prize package on the line for whoever finishes on top! Doc may be finding his footing as the season progresses. Whether you're rooting for him or trying to beat him, Tuesday is the day to get your picks in.

Blondies on the counter, pick sheet submitted on Tuesday, game on the screen Saturday. That is fall in Moore County done right.

Fall at the Sunday Table

This is the time of year when the Sunday table starts to shift. The watermelon and cucumber salad of summer has had its moment. What the table wants now is something warm from the oven, something with cinnamon and apples and the smell of autumn coming through the kitchen window with the cooler air.

A pan of Cinnamon Apple Blondies on the counter after Sunday supper is the right answer to that shift. They work alongside a cup of coffee or a glass of cider, they travel well to a gathering, and they keep for several days in an airtight container at room temperature, which means a batch baked on Sunday is still good on Wednesday and still getting compliments.

Fall is here. The kitchen has been waiting for it.