Peanut Butter Blueberry Swirl Blondies

Plus, what your airport style says about YOU!

A while back, I went on a date with a guy I had previously worked with. I never worked on his team — I had never even spoken to him — so it wasn’t weird. He really enjoyed discussing travel and airline miles, and he asked me, “What’s your Airport style?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I usually like to wear all black that way in case I sweat or spill on myself, you won’t be able to see it. Also light layers.”

“No,” he said, rattled. “I’m talking about which airport lounges you go to.” I don’t go to airport lounges.

This exchange came rushing back to me recently when I saw a YouTube ad that truly blew me away. I was so floored after the first five seconds that I laid my head down on my desk, weary from the world, and cried out laughing. And I couldn’t stop. “Wearing a cotton tee shirt to travel on a plane?” some coked out DTC founder shouted at the camera. “That’s not it!” The shirt you should wear to the airport is their tee shirt, which is somehow different, but that info was past the five-second “skip ad” button.

I’m not sure what it was about this ad that sent me over the edge into a fit of raging laughter. Maybe it was the ridiculousness of the delivery, but I think I saw it as a new low for consumerism? This salesman was actively judging the viewer for wearing what 99% of people wear on airplanes (a product that, honestly, I thought we had improved on as much as we could!) just to sell a slightly different version of it. (I wish I could find the ad!)

This is a fundamental of sales, right? Create a problem and sell the solution? And it’s been going on for decades if not centuries. But I was shocked at just how lazily the video fabricated an issue (cotton tee shirts?) with no real explanation, and vibrated with a judgement, a contempt that maybe other ads express with more subtly. It seemed so silly to me, but also maddening.

Of course, increasingly more of the things we consume or own have become signifiers. They tell other people what we want them to know about our identity and values. This has long been the case with some items like clothes — everyone has their own taste — but this phenomenon is now hyper-charged in a new age of constant new product releases. When trend cycles are getting cut shorter and shorter (Are you an Owala or a Stanley person?), when even the most basic purchases also have to represent your morals and politics, when the business world is obsessed with life-hacking and endless optimizing … have the most basic items become obsolete? If people can’t avoid feeling judged and inadequate while wearing a tee shirt on a plane — the simplest of things, and you’re doing it wrong! — I just don’t have much hope for how we fare against late-stage capitalism.

EGO Recommends

📝 Article: “My Internet: Foster Kamer”, Embedded
I have recommended Embedded, one of my favorite newsletters, on here before. On a airplane ride (!) this weekend, I spent a lot of time reading (whennn my airpods died), devouring my saved folder on Substack. This interview with Foster Kamer the editor-in-chief of Futurism, was a breath of fresh air, especially this passage.

Can we talk about all these media companies signing deals with OpenAI for a second? Let’s remember: These are often the same companies who leveraged their whole asses over to Facebook and Twitter and Google, built entire strategies around them. On so many of these deals, media companies got told what to do to make money (longform video, shortform video, Snapchat, etc), chased the money, got screwed over by the platforms when they ended those business initiatives for other, newer business initiatives, and the media companies then chased those instead (after, invariably, firing a bunch of people in the process). OpenAI—like Amazon, Meta, Twitter, etc, etc—they’re just a platform company. And these publishers, they’re chasing the shiny new thing again. If media gets shanghaied by Sam Altman and Co, let’s be clear, it will have been due to the consenting of a small group of people who have made many, many bad decisions in the past, and will probably continue to. We gotta start putting smarter people in charge of the media business, or at least different ones.

This Week’s Recipe

This recipe comes from a partnership I did with the Highbush Blueberry Council where I posted the video and recipes on Instagram and TikTok. This post isn’t sponsored, I just know it’s easier to read the recipe here — and it’s a great recipe!

This recipe is for all you people who think my best every chocolate chip cookies have brown butter in them. They do not. But these do! I love the feathered look of these but if you can’t be bothered (I get it) you could also dollop a few tablespoons of the jam randomly on the surface of the batter and swirl it around with a skewer, chopstick or butter knife. You can see the feathering technique in the video below:

easygayoven

A post shared by @easygayoven

Peanut Butter Blueberry Swirl Blondies

Makes 16-25 blondies

Ingredients

• 4 ounces fresh blueberries

• Zest and juice of half a lemon

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 1/4 cup granulated sugar

• 3/4 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt

• 1 teaspoon cornstarch mixed with 1 tablespoon water
  

• 8 tablespoons unsalted butter (113 grams)

• ¾ cup creamy peanut butter (not a “natural” brand) (180 grams)

• 1 cup dark brown sugar, lightly packed (175 grams)

• 2 large eggs

• 1 teaspoon of vanilla

• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

• 1 ¼ teaspoon kosher salt

• ½ cup all-purpose flour (65 grams)

• Sesame seeds (optional) 

Directions

1. In a small saucepan, combine the berries, juice, zest, vanilla, sugar and a pinch of salt. Cook, covered, over medium-low heat until the berries are soft and begin to burst. Crush as many berries as you can with the back of a wooden spoon or a rubber spatula.

2. Continue cooking, stirring often, until the berries have broken down completely and you’re left with a sauce-y, slightly thickened mixture. Stir in the corn starch-water mixture and let it come to a boil.

3. Cook until the mixture has thickened more and a spoon leaves a trail on the bottom of the pan that lasts for a second or two. Remove from heat and set aside to cool.

4. Grease a 9-inch baking tin and line with parchment. Preheat oven to 350°F. 

5. In a medium saucepan, brown the butter.

6. Stir the peanut butter into the browned butter and set aside to cool. 

7. In a medium mixing bowl with a hand mixer or in the bowl of a stand mixer, whip the eggs and brown sugar on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 4 minutes. You should feel barely any graininess when you rub the mixture between your fingers

8. Mix in the vanilla, salt and baking powder, then pour in the brown butter peanut butter mixture and combine. Finally, mix in the flour just until the last streaks of white disappear. 

9. Pour the batter into the prepared tin. Using a piping bag or a baggie with the corner snipped off, pipe several vertical lines of blueberry jam on top of the batter. Run a toothpick or skewer back and forth through the batter, perpendicular to the jam lines, every half-inch or so. Top with sesame seeds, if desired.

10. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes. Allow to cool in the tin for 5 minutes then use the parchment to lift out the blondies and allow to cool completely on a wire rack.