Cinnamon Sugar Blondies

The ultimate cinnamon sugar blondies! These gooey soft and chewy blondies with a cinnamon sugar swirl and a cream cheese drizzle are the essence of a cinnamon roll in blondie form. Quicker and easier than making your own homemade dough, but with all the flavour of your favorite brunch!

Jump to:

• Why you'll love these blondies
• Equipment Notes
• Ingredient Notes
• How to Make Cinnamon Sugar Blondies
• Expert Tips
• Storage Advice
• Variations and Substitutions
• Some Quick FAQs
• Want more cinnamon sugar? Try:
• Cinnamon Sugar Blondies

Why you'll love these blondies

• The ultimate cinnamon roll blondie - these are my blondie bar ode to the brunch time classic. They're incredibly soft, chewy and filled with cream cheese chips.
• Brown sugar and cinnamon - let's be honest, brown sugar is the best sugar! The cinnamon sugar swirl topping is a packed full of brown sugar enhancing the flavour of these blondies and also giving you a bit of a streusel top texture.
• Super simple recipe - it can't get any easier! You don't need any specialist equipment and the batter is essentially a one bowl recipe. I would bet you'll have these in the oven in less than 10 minutes!

Equipment Notes

You don't need any specialist equipment for this recipe. In fact, you don't really need much equipment at all! If you have the following at hand, you'll be set:

• 8" square baking pan - this is what I call a traditional brownie pan. You can use a 9" square pan too, but the blondies will be thinner and the cooking times will vary a bit.
• Parchment paper - I highly recommend lining your baking tray. It's a little extra effort at the start, but will make removing the blondies a lot cleaner, quicker and easier at the end!
• Mixing bowl - a large mixing bowl is the main thing, but you'll also want a small bowl (cereal bowl will do) for the cinnamon sugar mixture and another for the cream cheese topping.
• Sieve - to sift your dry ingredients into the batter.
• Whisk - a balloon whisk is perfect here.
• Spatula - you can also just use a spoon, but a spatula will make your life easier.

Ingredient Notes

This recipe is fundamentally divided into three parts: the cinnamon sugar blondie, the cinnamon sugar swirl and the cream cheese drizzle.

Cinnamon and Cream Cheese Blondies

For the blondies themselves, you'll need:

• Butter - unsalted butter, melted for best results. You can use salted here, but it will add salt to the overall recipe, meaning you might want to reduce the salt added to the dry ingredients. Using salted butter reduces your ability to control the saltiness in a bake, so it is generally best practice to avoid the salted version and use unsalted when baking.
• Sugar - granulated sugar or caster sugar.
• Light brown sugar - for the perfect chewy gooey texture, you'll want a good amount of brown sugar, firmly packed in the batter. This can be substituted with dark brown sugar, but the darker the brown sugar, the more molasses, which can become an overpowering flavour in the bake.
• Eggs - large eggs, ideally at room temperature.
• Vanilla extract
• Flour - all purpose or plain flour will work here. You can also use cake flour, but if doing so, increase the measurement by about ¼ cup and leave out the cornstarch.
• Cornstarch - this helps to lighten the flour. As noted with the flour itself, you can avoid using cornstarch by using cake flour instead of all-purpose. Cornstarch is called cornflour in the UK, but cornflour in the US is a completely different ingredient!
• Salt
• Baking powder
• Cinnamon
• Cream cheese morsels - these fun little cream cheese chips are available in some shops. If you can't find them near you, you may be able to locate on Amazon. Alternatively, simply substitute with white chocolate chips, which will still offer gooey goodness to these blondie bars.

Cinnamon Sugar Swirl

This cinnamon sugar swirl is part swirl, part crisp topping - that's the beauty of using brown sugar and ensuring a nice thick coat!

You'll need just two ingredients:

• Light brown sugar - firmly packed. Just like with the blondie bars, you could use dark brown sugar here, but it will add a more deep molasses-y flavour to the recipe. Which, you may want! It's up to you!
• Cinnamon - a nice healthy dose of ground cinnamon for good measure.

Cream Cheese Drizzle

You'll finish these off with a thick and creamy cream cheese drizzle to really drive home the cinnamon roll vibes. You'll need:

• Powdered sugar - or icing sugar. This doesn't normally need sifted for this recipe, unless your powdered sugar has any particularly firm lumps!
• Cream cheese - soft spreadable cream cheese. Use full-fat here for best results.
• Vanilla extract - this will enhance the flavour of the frosting and the overall recipe.

How to Make Cinnamon Sugar Blondies

These blondies are a quick recipe with simple, easy-to-follow steps:

1. Start by preheating your oven and lining your square baking tray with parchment paper.
2. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together your sugars and melted butter until well emulsified.
3. Then add the eggs and vanilla, beating to combine (image 1 below).
4. Sift the flour, baking powder, cornstarch, salt and cinnamon into the wet ingredients and then stir with a spatula until just combined (image 2 below).
5. Add the cream cheese morsels or white chocolate chips and stir to combine.
6. Pour the batter into the prepared baking pan (image 3 below).
7. In a small bowl stir together the ingredients for your streusel swirl (the brown sugar and cinnamon) and sprinkle generously over the top of your batter.
8. Using a kitchen knife, swirl this lightly into the batter (image 4 below). This will ensure that the flavour is more evenly distributed and you have good coverage.
9. Bake in the preheated oven for about 40 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out mostly clean.
10. Once baked, remove and allow to cool in the pan for about 2 hours, to allow the blondies to set.
11. Stir together the powdered sugar, cream cheese and vanilla until you have a thick smooth glaze. Then pipe over the blondies before slicing and serving.

Expert Tips

To ensure success with this recipe, here are my top tips:

• Avoid over mixing your batter - the goal is to ensure that you've not left any clumps of dry ingredients unmixed, but you don't want to beat this together excessively.
• The cinnamon sugar swirl in this recipe will be very similar to a streusel topping - thickly coating the top of the blondies in a crisp sugary layer. Swirling with the knife is more for distribution than having an aesthetic swirl on top.
• When adding the cream cheese glaze, you can use milk or water to adjust the consistency. The recipe here should provide a thick frosting that can be piped over the top of the blondies. If you want it more runny, simply add a little milk about a teaspoon at a time, stirring well to check consistency. To make the frosting thicker, add more powdered sugar. Again any additions should be added sparingly to avoid over doing it!

Storage Advice

These blondies keep well for a few days if well wrapped.

Strictly speaking, due to the cream cheese frosting, they should be kept in the refrigerator, however, they will taste better if allowed to come back to room temperature before serving.

Variations and Substitutions

Just like any blondie or brownie bar, these cinnamon sugar blondies are ripe for alteration! Some of my key suggestions for varying the recipe or successfully substituting are found below:

• White chocolate chips - I know not everyone has access to the Cream Cheese Morsels called for in this recipe. I've sometimes struggled to find them too! But, rest assured, substituting with white chocolate chips, or solid white chocolate cut into small chunks will work well in this recipe.
• Different sugar in the topping - you can make this recipe substituting dark brown sugar in place of light brown sugar. It will give a more deeply molasses flavour and a darker browning to the top. You can also use granulated sugar, however white sugar will not give the rich streusel texture or flavour of the brown sugars. If substituting with granulated sugar, reduce the amount of sugar by about half. The swirl will be more apparent, and the top not so thickly covered.
• Frosting options - I use a cream cheese frosting here to mimic the flavors of a traditional cinnamon roll. You can opt for a simple vanilla glaze instead, using milk and powdered sugar, without cream cheese.
• Dairy free - this recipe can be made dairy free with a substitution of the butter in the blondie. A good quality non-dairy butter or shortening should work here, but I have not thoroughly tested options available. Likewise, for a dairy free cinnamon sugar blondie, either leave off the cream cheese glaze or substitute with a vanilla one made with powdered sugar and non-dairy milk.

Some Quick FAQs

Want more cinnamon sugar? Try:

• Puff Pastry Cinnamon Twists
• Cinnamon Roll Ice Cream
• Brioche Cinnamon Rolls
• Cinnamon Bundt Cake