One Tasty Sunday...Making Unky Bars (AKA Super Cinnamon Blondies)

Welcome to our very first One Tasty Sunday post!  Today was Little Man's first time as sous chef in Mommy's kitchen.  Recently I found a recipe for Snickerdoodle Blondies at Your Homebased Mom that I have been dying to test.  LM's Uncle is a big fan of cinnamon toast and I felt, with a little tweaking, I could make these taste pretty close to the real thing.  So we gathered the ingredients and away we ran!  Of course, LM is still just barely two so, I threw in as much learning as I could along the way and we ended up with a lot of counting and learning the names of the ingredients.

 The original recipe was called Snickerdoodle Blondies.  My new version is Super Cinnamon Blondies since I definitely amped up the cinnamon, but mostly, thanks to Little Man, we now call them Unky Bars.   =)   We had a great time learning and playing through this recipe, and we can't wait to hear how much LM's Unky loves them.

Here is the shot I got of Little Man just after he strongly requested I let him taste the flour we were using...

And this is him trying to wipe his tongue clean...He gave me a look that asked, "Why did you let me do that Mom!?!?" 





And I have to say, I felt a little guilty about it.  But, he didn't demand a taste of anything else.  At least not until the bars came out of the oven!

Little Man stirring the dry ingredients. 
Rather than adding 2 whole cups of flour, we added 8 1/4 cups so LM could
practice counting, scooping, and dumping using the smaller measuring cup.

I love my KitchenAid Mixer, and so does Little Man.
He had a lot of fun watching it do its job, but also had the
responsibility of pouring and mixing the cinnamon chips.

I think patting down the dough into the pan was his favorite part though!
Let's hope Unky doesn't mind a few fingerprints!

Here is the finished product.  They turned out delicious.
No, not delicious...let's say HEAVENLY.

UNKY BARS  (AKA SUPER CINNAMON BLONDIES)

Bars:
2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 Tbsp. ground cinnamon
¼ tsp. ground nutmeg
½ tsp. cream of tartar
1 tsp. salt
2 cups brown sugar, packed
1 cup butter, at room temperature
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 1/2 Tbsp. vanilla extract
1 2/3 cup cinnamon chips
Topping:
2 Tbsp. granulated sugar
1 Tbsp. ground cinnamon
pinch of nutmeg

-Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
-Spray a 9×13-inch pan with nonstick spray.
-Whisk together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, cream of tartar and salt and set aside.
-In a large bowl, cream together butter and brown sugar with an electric mixer (3 to 5 minutes).
-Mix in eggs, one at a time, then vanilla and keep beating until the mixture is smooth.
-Stir in flour mixture until well blended.
-Stir in cinnamon chips. 
-The batter will be thick. Spread it evenly into the prepared pan. Spray your hands with cooking spray and use them to pat the mixture down evenly.
-Combine the topping ingredients in a small bowl; sprinkle evenly on top of batter.
-Bake about 30 minutes or until surface springs back when gently pressed. (I have found that they appear to be underdone when they are ready to come out of the oven.  They do continue to firm up in the pan, and will get crunchy if you cook them too long.  Just have faith!)
-Let pan cool before cutting.
Makes 20 to 24 bars