08 December 2013


It's time for this month's Secret Recipe Club! The Secret Recipe Club is a group of food bloggers who secretly make one of someone else's dishes and post them all on the same day at the same time.  It's really fun, choosing a recipe to make, making the recipe, then reading about everyone else's recipes.  It's a great way to "meet" other bloggers and check out some great blogs that you never knew about before.

Secret Recipe Club

This month I was assigned the blog Food Ramblings, written by Elizabeth.  I love her blog!  She has so many great recipes that I want to try.  A couple of savory dinners that caught my eye were her Beef and Tomato Risotto and her French Onion Casserole.  But with the holidays coming up, I was kind more in the mood for dessert.  The first dessert of hers I pinned was her Chocolate Buttermilk Pie.  I make a regular buttermilk pie and was very interested in how a chocolate version would taste.  But then I saw her recipe for Gingerbread Oreo Blondies, and I am all about everything "gingerbread" right now, so that's what I went with.  

Gingerbread Oreos are very hard to find.  I googled it and found out that last year Walmart was the only store to carry them.  My Walmart didn't have them this year.  Shoot!  But I already had my mind set on making these blondies, so I did something I have never done before: I bought food on Amazon.com.  They were selling them as an "add-on" item, so I ordered my daughters some Christmas presents and added on these cookies.  It wasn't until after I received them and went to print out Elizabeth's recipe, that I saw her solution to the availability problem.  She couldn't find them either, but found a similar cookie at Target.  Oops.  I had read that the first time I saw that post, but had (inconveniently) forgotten that part.  Oh well!  



Gingerbread Oreo Blondies

Ingredients:
1 cup butter, melted
2 cups brown sugar
2 eggs, beaten
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp ground ginger
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
1 cup white chocolate chips
20 Gingerbread Oreos or Target Brand

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°. Spray 9x13 pan with baking spray and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, combine butter and brown sugar.  Stir in eggs and vanilla.  Dump in the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg.  Mix dry ingredients into wet ingredients until combined.  Stir in the white chocolate chips.

Pour half of the blondie dough into the pan and spread evenly. Press the Oreos on top of the blondie dough, evenly spacing them out.  Using two spoons, place a blob of remaining dough on top of each cookie.  Spray a silicone scraper with Pam and use it to flatten out the dough blobs a little bit.  Don’t worry about the spaces between the cookies; they will fill in with dough as it bakes.

Bake for 30-40 minutes or until a fork comes out clean. Allow to cool completely. Cut into squares and serve.


Makes 20 blondies.

Here are a few pics of the process.

 The dough is very thick, so you have to be very careful in spreading it out in the pan.  


 The cookie layer.  I forgot to take a pic of the next step, where I blobbed the dough on top of the cookies and flattened it out.  Sorry!  It's really neat how the cookies just kind of meld into the dough as it bakes.  After it cools on the counter for a while, you can kind of see the lumps where the cookies are, which is really nice because it makes it very easy to cut even portions (something I am always bad at).


They aren't the prettiest things in the world, but after one bite, no one will care what they look like.

Oh my goodness, these were so good it was totally worth the Amazon splurge.  I just love blondies.  I certainly don't have anything against brownies, but there is just something about blondies.  They are so buttery and decadent. And the gingerbread flavor in these is just perfect.  The only thing I changed about Elizabeth's recipe was to increase the ginger in the dough.  She called for 1/8th of a teaspoon, but I love ginger, and since "ginger" is in the title of the recipe, I decided to bump it up a bit.  The cookies are really good on their own too.  I had to try one by itself, of course!  I'm surprised that Oreo doesn't distribute these more, because they are delicious.  If you happen across a package, get one!  (Or two.)  I am definitely going to look for the Target brand too.

These made the perfect dessert for when we had friends over.  They were a hit with the adults and kids alike.  These blondies definitely satisfied my craving for gingerbread-something and they are the perfect dessert for this time of year.  Thanks for a great recipe, Elizabeth!

The Secret Recipe Club is taking a little holiday break, so Group A is taking January off.  We'll be back with another great reveal the first Monday of February.  Merry Christmas to all of my fellow SRC members!


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10 comments:

  1. OMG, I need some of those blondies right now!

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  2. I'm so glad you enjoyed the recipe! I love that you bought the oreos on Amazon-- I bet it tasted even better than the Target imitations :) Please visit Food Ramblings again :) xoxo Elizabeth

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  3. Love these types of recipes with cookies in a square, looks so good. I have never seen Gingerbread Oreo

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  4. WOW, these look incredible!!!

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  5. I love the idea of gingerbread blondies and am definitely adding this to my holiday baking list! With just a couple of adjustments I can make these gluten-free and I'll bet they will be a big hit with the family!

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  6. Lesa these sound perfect for the holidays, what an amazing find at SRC. I've never spotted the Gingerbread Oreos. Will have to keep an eye out for them.

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  7. Those look amazing! I never would have thought to bake Oreos into a recipe like this, but how perfect.

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  8. Lesa, these look amazing! I am headed to Walmart this afternoon to FIND THOSE COOKIES. I love blondies and I love gingerbread, so I know I will adore these! I'm so glad you chose this particular recipe to make! :)

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  9. Looks like your determination paid off - these look amazing!

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  10. How did I not know that Gingerbread Oreos existed?!?! I haven't seen them! Now I absolutely need to find them. WOW! These blondes sounds so good!

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