Did The Blondie Or Brownie Come First?

Blondies and brownies are both deliciously decadent cookie bars. These days, chocolatey brownies are far more popular in America, but that wasn't always the case.

Due to their cute and punny name, it's logical to assume that brownies came before blondies — someone made brownies without chocolate and decided to call them blondies. But of course, food history is never that simple. In reality, blondies likely came before brownies, or at least brownies as we know them today. That's because — brace yourselves — the first brownies probably did not contain chocolate. These early "brownies" first appeared in the late 1800s and usually got their namesake dark tone from molasses.

Fannie Farmer's 1896 "Boston Cooking-School Cook Book" contained a recipe for nutty molasses-sweetened dessert bars widely recognized as the first blondies (except they were called brownies). At the same time, the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago claims that an unknown chef whipped up the first chocolatey brownies (with walnuts and apricot glaze) in the hotel kitchen in 1893. So yeah, the exact origins of brownies and blondies are sticky at best. What is clear is that blondies were likely the original brownies, and enjoyed widespread popularity before their chocolatey counterparts.

Modern blondies are characterized by the use of brown sugar instead of white and a lack of chocolate, but early versions of the tawny cookie bars typically relied on smoky-sweet molasses as a substitute for brown sugar. In the late 1800s, molasses was the most affordable sweetener option for many American bakers. Chocolate would have been much less accessible. As such, most early "brownies" were really blondies by today's standards. In the early 1900s, advancements in science and technology allowed chocolate to become a staple in the home kitchen. As increasingly chocolatey brownie recipes flourished, the term blonde brownies was introduced to distinguish the two sweet treats. By the 1970s, the term blondies began to take off. 

While it's hard to compete with majorly fudgy brownies, blondies are still quite popular for a reason. In addition to their rich history, the cookie bars offer a wonderfully customizable, complexly flavored contrast to brownies. And with contemporary variations such as boozy butterscotch bourbon blondies and honeycomb cheesecake blondies, who needs chocolate?