soft, fudgy, citrusy almond butter blondies…..plus a bonus recipe for peanut butter blondies!
I obviously love cooking and baking and experimenting in the kitchen, but I’ve not had much time to do so of late.
This is why one of the reasons these blondies is so darn wonderful. They come together in minutes, and are a one-bowl, low-mess recipe. They’re gluten free and vegan and I bet you already have most of the ingredients in your kitchen right now.
If you don’t have red grapefruits, hurry out and get a bunch before the season ends! They are so wonderful this year. The citrus in these is actually rather mild, despite having a generous pour of grapefruit juice and three tablespoons of zest. Yes, that’s right. I started out with less than half that, but batch after batch of blondies yielded no grapefruit flavor at all. I’m not sorry, because I got to eat a lot of grapefruit during testing.
I usually eat way more peanut butter than almond butter, but I’ve been on a big almond butter kick lately, can’t get enough. Mostly because almond butter was on sale for once. I know that a lot goes into making almond butter, which is why it’s priced as such, but I rarely purchase it at regular cost. So when I spotted some on sale, I stocked up. (cue my mother lecturing me on spending more on sale items because I bought a lot of them).
These blondies worked out so well with their almond-butter-avocado base that I decided to try them with peanut butter-banana. This was a good decision. So today, you get two awesome nut butter blondie recipes. Yay!
wait, Annie. You go over a week without posting a recipe, and now you’re including two in the same post? why?
Well, first, the ratios in both recipes are almost the same, give or take a few changes. And the process is the same. That made me feel guilty about making them two separate posts. If I’m going to be flaky about blogging while I wrap up school, I want you to get your money’s worth when I do post. Also, bars themselves look alike, and I didn’t want y’all to be bored looking at similar photos. Here is the only picture of the peanut-butter banana blondies.

Jason chose not to wait for the bars to cool before he dug in. He did this because he thought it would annoy me. It half annoyed me, but I mostly thought it was cute. Sorry. Ugh, now I’m the annoying one, thinking that my husband’s dumb habits are cute.
Trust me, if these bars had been complicated at all, I would have been super mad. But a) I was planning on making them again and b) they took less than five minutes to make, so…..whatever. c) There was no sign telling him not to eat them. I have to make signs when I plan to shoot. Because manchild.
err…well, he might have not been the only one who couldn’t wait until the pan was cool. 😇
Ingredients
- 2/3 cup almond butter
- 1/3 cup mashed avocado*
- 1/2 cup maple syrup
- 3/4 cup fresh squeezed grapefruit juice
- 3 tbsp grapefruit zest
- 1/2 cup old-fashioned oats
- 1/2 cup chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400
- Line an 8 x 4 loaf pan with parchment or aluminum foil.
- Throw all of the ingredients, except for the chocolate chips, in a blender or food processor until fully combined and smooth. Make sure there are no oatmeally lumps
- Pour the batter into your prepared pan and swirl in the chips
- Bake for 30 minutes, until a tester inserted comes out mostly clean (or with a few wet crumbs)
- Allow to cool before cutting. Serve with love.
Notes
*this is about 1 medium avocado, or about 1.5 smaller avocados) **about three grapefruits' worth

BONUS recipe, Peanut Butter Banana Chocolate Chip Blondies
- 2/3 cup creamy peanut butter
- 1/2 cup of mashed banana (about 1 medium banana)
- 1/4 cup maple syrup
- 3/4 cup of almond milk
- 1/2 cup old-fashioned oats
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
- 1/2 cup chocolate chips
- a generous sprinkle of coarse-flake kosher salt
- Preheat the oven to 400 and line a 8×4 loaf pan with foil or parchment
- Throw all ingredients, minus the chocolate chips and the salt, into a blender. Blend till smooth with no lumps
- Pour into prepared pan, swirl in the chocolate chips, and sprinkle the salt on top
- Bake for 30 minutes, tester may still have wet crumbs. Allow to cool before cutting. Yields 8 bars
note: the sweet notes in the peanut-butter blondies are light. if you prefer a sweeter blondie, use 1/3 cup of maple.
I’m so totally in love with swapping butter out for avocado’s. These blondies look amazing.
Nicole @ Young, Broke and Hungry recently posted…Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Cookies
Thanks! Aren’t avocados wonderful? (and fussy)
Seriously interesting combination. You’re braver than me trying those ingredients together.
you can’t really taste the avo…..so it’s just the almond grapefruit chocolate rockin’ together! 🙂
I love Avocado and these look awesome! Such a good idea. Can’t wait to try these out sometime.
Thank you!! I’ve always loved the name Kayla, btw