Lemon Matcha-Swirl Blondies

Spring in a dessert

Hey, hey!! Coming to you a little late this week since I needed to do one more test to see how to best assemble these blondies.

I had a lovely week getting outside to enjoy STUNNING NYC weather, hitting a comedy show, taking a TUFTING (aka rug making) class, finishing Such a Fun Age, and baking my lil heart out with these lemon matcha-swirl blondies.

I feel like true spring, when it’s no longer raining but it’s not yet sweltering, is the best time of the year. We have energy, we’re reveling in every tree that’s exploded overnight with green, and we’re not yet out of the city with summer plans.

I have every intention of soaking up this time of the year, and I hope you do, too. For me this means saying yes more than saying no, and spending as much time at parks as possible. I encourage you to think about what soaking it up means for you!

my illegible butter rug <3

Recommendations

• 🎶 Early 2000’s rom com playlist for getting ready in the morning: This playlist opens to the ultimate getting-dressed-for-work song, Suddenly I See from The Devil Wears Prada. The whole playlist is guaranteed to hit your spring morning with a big jolt of joy.

• 🎨TUFTING: I spent 5 hours this Saturday in a tufting (aka rug making) class with one of my best friends for her 30th birthday. It was an absolute joy to spend time with her doing something creative. The tufting was challenging but so fun and now I have an ITCH TO TUFT at all times. My fancy French butter rug turned out illegible but cute, and now I have dreams of making rugs of all major butter brands.

• 🍳 Breakfast by Salt’s Cure (West Village, Carroll Gardens, Prospect Heights) and a coffee at Amano: Salt’s Cure has a line, but grab a coffee nearby at Amano (near both the West Village and Carroll Gardens locations) to drink while you wait. Amano has the best iced oat latte in the city, no argument. Salt’s Cure has great vibes, delish chicken and pork sausage, and fun griddle cakes. The griddle cakes are supposed to be enjoyed sans-syrup, but I thought they needed some and luckily I brought a small bottle! Life is short, do what you want!!

This week’s recipe

Without a doubt, the most popular recipes I’ve developed are blondies. I started my blondies journey as a blondies HATER in 2022 and quickly became a blondies evangelist. I think it’s similar to how Christina Tosi used to hate cake. So she started making cakes she knew she’d like - moist, with add-ins to give it a wide variety of textures and flavors - and now she is a cake whisperer.

I used to think of blondies as a dry, inferior version of a brownie. What I truly wanted was brownie texture, but vanilla flavor. And that’s what you can count on in each of my blondie recipes! The blondies fam is currently almond frangipane blondies (the inside of an almond croissant meets a blondie), birthday cake blondies (planning to revisit this recipe and adjust some ratios soon, but it does have 100 five-star reviews so feel free to make it now), bakewell blondies (frangipane blondies with raspberry jam), SUPER brown butter blondies (using dry milk powder to amp up the brown butter), and brown butter chocolate chip blondies.

And now we have a new, distinct member of the blondie fam: lemon matcha-swirl blondies. Round of applause for the new gal!!! Lemon zest gets rubbed into sugar to bring out the lemon flavor. Chopped white chocolate gets folded in. And we reserve a quarter of the batter to mix with matcha and then marble into blondies.

The result is the perfect spring/summer blondie: light from the lemon, slightly earthy from the matcha, with dots of melty white chocolate. They got outstanding reviews from my fiancee and my coworkers, so I hope you make them!!

Note: You can use any matcha. Culinary grade is usually a go-to for baking, but sometimes it’s not as bright, so I used ceremonial matcha to get a more vibrant color. You can get matcha in most grocery stores.

Lemon Matcha-Swirl Blondies

Makes 16 small or 9 large blondies

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