Brownies!!

I don't work on the weekends. Well, I don't work at Starbucks or Home Depot. I do work at home, doing things like housecleaning or laundry. You know, the usual things. I used to work weekends. Almost every Saturday and Sunday. Then, two years ago, I had back surgery and while recovering I decided that when I went back to work it was only going to be Monday - Friday. I figured if my bosses valued me, they would take me whenever I was available. And, they did. So, I now work Monday thru Friday from 6AM to 4PM. That's at both jobs. 5 hours at Starbucks, an hour off and then 4 hours at Home Depot.

But, I digress. This post is supposed to be about brownies.

While scrolling through my Facebook feed a week or two ago, I stumbled across a link to Peanut Butter Cookie Brownies. The pictures looked amazing and I saved the link for a time when I could make them. That time was yesterday afternoon, after I finished making my Pineapple Upside-down cake.

The recipe for the brownies was actually two part. You made a brownie recipe, either a box version of your favorite brand, or in my case, a scratch recipe for brownies.

 Once that was made, I made the peanut butter cookie recipe. The recipe, that I will post at the end of this post, called for baking the brownies in a 9" pan. I wanted to surprise my Home Depot coworkers with them so I needed more than what a 9' pan would yield. I made them in a jelly roll pan.


















Anyway, aside from the different pan, I basically followed "The Little Kitchen's" recipe.

These brownies are amazing! Super chewy, moist and delicious! I used King Arthur's black cocoa powder in place of dutch processed and it gave the brownies a darker, richer depth than regular dutch cocoa would have. I used Ghirardelli  bittersweet chocolate in the brownies. It's my favorite brand of chocolate.

Give these brownies a try. I promise you won't be disappointed.

https://www.thelittlekitchen.net/peanut-butter-cookie-brownies/

Tuesdays with Dorie - Brrrr-ownies!

Karen of Welcome to our Crazy Blessed Life picked this weeks TWD choice. She picked Brrrr-ownies. I was excited to see brownies as the choice, until I read the recipe. When I saw that Peppermint Patties were to be used I started having my doubts.

I am not a big peppermint person. I used to like peppermint. But that was before a Christmas party at which I got a little over intoxicated on Rumplemintz, a very potent peppermint schnapps, and finished my night praying to the porcelain god. :}For some reason, ever since that night, long, long ago, I am not too crazy about peppermint. Go figure.

However, the hubby loves peppermint. Peppermint patties, peppermint gum. Peppermint ice cream.  I love him in spite of that. And, because I love him in spite of his love of peppermint, I decided to bite the bullet and make these brownies for him.

These were so simple to put together. Melt some chocolate and butter. Mix in some sugar, eggs, vanilla and flour. Fold in some chopped up peppermint patties. I have to admit, it seemed a terrible shame to me to "ruin" a perfectly delicious tasting brownie batter by adding the patties, but I went ahead and added them. Poured the whole bowl of batter into a buttered foil lined pan and baked away.

I peeked at the brownies after about 28 minutes, to see how they looked and was horrified to see white bubbles of peppermint patties oozing up out of the crust. (At this point I had not read the P&Q). I figured it was too late to do anything about it, and left the pan in the oven for another  few minutes till they were done.

I followed Dorie's directions for peeling off the foil, but had several spots of brownie/melted patty that stuck to the foil. I forged ahead, grabbed a knife and cut the batch into 16 small bars. Took some pictures and set the brownies aside.

Later, when the hubby tried them, and sang his praises about how delicious and chocolate-y and moist and chewy they were, I decided to try a little bite to see what all the fuss was about.

Wow! These things are soooo good. Dangerously good. Moist. Chewy. Rich. Full of dark chocolate-y flavor. Surprisingly not overly peppermint-y. There is a cooling sensation in your mouth as you eat them, but I really didn't feel like I was eating peppermint patty laced brownies. I loved them!

These I will make again and I am thinking all kinds of candy bar additions...Milky Ways, Snickers, peanut butter cups...the list goes on and on. If  you would like to see what the other bakers thought, head over to TWD and find out. Me? I think I might go eat me a brownie. :)

On a different note...I had a busy week (busy compared to how it's been anyway) in my baking business. Thought I would leave you with a few pictures of the cakes and cupcakes I made this week.

Tuesdays with Dorie - Rick Katz's brownies for Julia

Another Tuesday and another terrific (chocolate!!) recipe from Dorie's book, "Baking". This week's yummy selection is Tanya's choice. Tanya's blog, Chocolatechic is where you can find the recipe. Tanya is a woman of few words, but, they are always worth reading. :) Please be sure to drop by her blog and check it out.

I whipped these brownies up yesterday afternoon. I almost messed up. I had the book open on the counter and as I looked at the recipe to double check where I was and what was next, I realized I was reading the wrong recipe. I almost made Bittersweet Brownies instead of Rick Katz's brownies for Julia! :D Never a dull moment around here folks!

The brownies were pretty simple to put together. Melt some butter with chopped chocolate, unsweetened and bittersweet. Stir in some sugar. Beat some sugar with eggs. Use half in the melted chocolate. Whip the other half. Add that to the melted chocolate/egg mixture, sprinkle with flour, blend that in,pour into pan, bake. See, simple. I decided to bake my brownies in a special brownie pan a good friend bought for me last year. In my house, the hubby and I fight over the corners when we have brownies. I like the crusty edges, and so does he. If I don't watch him, he will eat all the corners and I won't get any! Elaine, my friend, bought me a pan that bakes 12 individual brownies!! Each brownie is all edges!! I love it. And, I don't have to cut brownies each time I want one. They are already "cut" for me! Life is good!

I was multi-tasking while the brownies were baking, and almost ruined the whole batch. I was in the other room, writing up the post about Braised Short Ribs when the buzzer went off letting me know the brownies were done. Well, I didn't hear it. After several minutes (5 or 10??? I don't know!) my hubby said, "hey, I think your stuff is done in the oven". I raced into the kitchen and yanked the pan out of the oven. And, actually, I think it was good I "forgot" them. Several of the posts I read about these said they were "gooey" inside. Mine were moist (believe it or not!) but not gooey. And rich. And full of chocolate flavor. These are some seriously good brownies! Seriously! But, hey, don't just take my word for it. Check out what the other bakers thought of this one. Oh, and Tanya, Thank You!!!

Sweet Melissa Sunday - Black Bottom Brownies

This weeks recipe , which was chosen by Cynthia of Bakingtherapist's blog, was Black Bottom Brownies. I am sure she will have the recipe up on her blog soon, just in case you don't own The Sweet Melissa Baking Book. And, if you are reading this and you don't own the book, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy. It's full of wonderful, yummy recipes.

I am going to keep this short and sweet. A very wonderful, kind, funny, caring woman I knew, who was in fact a neighbor of mine, passed away this morning from lung cancer. I was fortunate enough to have spent some time with her last Sunday and was able to tell her how grateful I was to have known her. A friend of the family just called here a little bit ago to relay the news. I am going to miss Corinne very much. She was spunky and a fighter and never let the terrible disease she had get her down. She was smiling the last time I saw her and that is how I will always remember her.

Anyway, back to this weeks recipe. These brownies were pretty easy to put together. I had really high hope for them as I have a favorite brownie cheesecake I make and I thought that these would be like that.

I may have over baked them a tad. My top looked more brown than golden. I cut them into small bars and hubby and I gave them a try.

The first night we had them, we weren't impressed. The brownie part was kind of dry and the cheesecake part kind of blah. The best part was the middle where the chocolate chips had settled and melted. But, the next night we tried these, we couldn't believe they were the same bars. The brownie part was chewy and chocolate-y, the cheesecake moist and creamy and the combination of all three layers was rich and satisfying. Go figure. I found that the bars kept getting better as more time passed. I am glad we gave them a second try because it changed my opinion of these completely. I still think my brownie cheesecake is better, but, these bars are a good "eat with your hands" substitution.

Want to know what the other bakers thought? Head over to SMS and see.

Tuesdays with Dorie - Cherry-Fudge Brownie Torte

Hi All! I am back from my trip to Germany and Ireland and I had a wonderful time. It's good to be baking again! :)

This weeks recipe was chosen by April of Short + rose, and it's a combination of chocolate and cherries. I love chocolate, but not so much cherries. However, my hubby loves cherries so I decided to bake this recipe for him. I seriously thought about skipping it when I started looking over the ingredients...I had no kirsch, no mascarpone cheese, no cherries, no cherry preserves. What pushed me into making it anyway was that I have missed two TWD's this month and didn't want to miss another one. :}

My local grocery store had the cherries and preserves, but no kirsch and no mascarpone cheese. So, I decided to use white wine instead and went with whipped cream cheese instead of the regular cream cheese and the mascarpone.

The brownie part gave me some trouble. I baked it for an hour and 5 minutes, and when I flipped it out of the pan, the very middle was still very soft. Not totally unbaked, but mushy. Then of course, there was the problems with the topping. I think it was supposed to have been runny to later firm up? Well, mine was soft and fluffy; it didn't pour onto the brownie, I spread it on. SinceI had done  everything else different than the recipe up to this point, I also added some cherry filling I had on hand (kind of like jam) to the whipped cream cheese, and spread a thin layer of it on the brownie before I spread on the topping.

The verdict?  I wasn't crazy about this one and probably won't make it again. My hubby said the cherries were too tart for his liking, though I noticed he ate the whole slice I gave him. I liked the topping I came up with the best. Well, I also liked the brownie, but only the parts without cherries, and there aren't too many of them.

If you want to see what the other bakers thought, head over to TWD, As for me, I always like trying new recipes, but I think this one will be a one time only for me.

Tuesdays with Dorie (on Sunday night?) or you had me at chocolate/coffee/cheesecake

My whole reason for starting this blog is I wanted to be a part of "Tuesdays with Dorie", a group that bakes a different recipe a week from the book "Baking" by Dorie Greenspan. I had this book before I ever knew about the group and each week I would check the blog to see what they baked. Not having a blog kept me from joining the group...until now.

I haven't officially been accepted, but, I have gone ahead and baked the recipe for this Tuesday - Espresso Cheesecake Brownies. I am hoping that the fact that I baked on Sunday instead of Tuesday won't disqualify me. :) I will be cleaning houses on Tuesday (to pay the bills) and had the free time today to bake, so I did.

The recipe was pretty easy to pull together. I already had everything I needed on hand. I did use bittersweet chips rather than chopped bars for the melted chocolate part, but I don't think it affected the outcome. I whipped up the brownies in a 4 cup glass measuring cup. The batter seemed a bit thicker than I think it should have been, because when it came time to swirl it with the cheesecake batter it didn't swirl so much as just move around in the batter. The cheesecake batter itself smelled wonderful with the addition of the espresso and was a lovely "coffee with cream" color. I baked mine for the minimum time of 30 minutes.

They turned out fabulous! Delicious! I was already sold by the fact that the recipe called for espresso and chocolate, two of my favorite flavors. Not to mention cheesecake. I mean, how can you go wrong.  But I wasn't prepared for just how good the final result would be.

The tangy sour cream topping is the first thing you taste, it's tanginess cut by the addition of the confectioners sugar. Then, the espresso flavor floods your mouth, blending with the sour cream, and finally the chocolate of the brownies melds with the other flavors and it all comes together like a well orchestrated dance. My hubby said "it was a party in his mouth". They were smooth, creamy, rich, and considering how easy overall they were to pull together, I can see these being made quite often in my house. I wonder what the other bakers thought...