Apr 15
Last week my 3-year-old son had his tonsils and adenoids removed. What a stressful time for all of us! Even though this type of surgery is the most common one performed on children, any parent would still be worried about this happening to their own child. Read more
Oh no, not another chocolate and peanut butter post! Yes, yes, it is. I’m sorry to my readers who are so sick of hearing me continue on about peanut butter and chocolate! Read more
May 13
When I made Donna Hay’s Chocolate Cupcake Mix, I promised you I’d eventually try out more of her dessert kits. For this post I chose the Molten Chocolate Chunk Brownie Kit. The picture of the brownies on the box looks to-die-for, which is why I chose these over the Chocolate Chip Cookie Kit (which I’m sure will be next).
Donna Hay’s chocolate cupcakes from the kit were pretty good, but I was disappointed in the frosting. There wasn’t enough of it, and it turned out much lighter in color than the frosting on the box, which was so dark it looked like fudge. Also, the wrappers kept peeling away from the cupcakes, which was quite annoying.
I wasn’t much happier with the brownies. All that is required to make the brownies is some butter and eggs, then you whisk it into the dry ingredients from the kit. After whisking, you mix the chocolate chunks in.
Jun 7
One of the recipes from Martha Stewart’s COOKIES book that I’ve been so excited to try out is chocolate ginger brownies. I finally got some fresh ginger so I baked up a batch of these this past week.
They were really amazing – gooey and gingery! I don’t think you could make these without the fresh ginger and still have them taste just as great – so don’t try to substitute the fresh ginger with more ground dry ginger, use fresh!
I will note that these seemed to taste better fresh from the oven. They seemed to become stale and hard really quickly. I’d definitely recommend eating all these up on the same day that you bake them. If not, put a square of brownie in the microwave for about 10 seconds to warm it back up.
Apr 29
I’ve made blondies once before, Martha Stewart’s hazelnut blondies, and they didn’t turn out very well. I didn’t understand much about blondies at the time; for example, I didn’t realize they were supposed to be gooey in the middle, and therefore I baked the hazelnut blondies until the top was so crunchy it was impossible to cut with a knife!
Since then I have learned more about blondies, or so I thought, so I decided to attempt making them for a second time. I chose to try out a recipe for macadamia nut and chocolate chip blondies from Use Real Butter. As you may know, I’m not a huge fan of crunchy nuts in my cakes, cookies or brownies, but this recipe actually looked too good to pass up.
I baked them for 28 minutes in an 8×8 pan. They looked fine from the outside (except the top was really shiny!?). But the inside was super, super gooey. So I had failed again. I checked the recipe, and I had done everything I was supposed to and added all the right amounts of ingredients, so I’m not sure why I get super, super gooey blondies. The photo of these blondies at Use Real Butter doesn’t appear to be anywhere near as gooey as mine turned out.
I’ve came to the conclusion that perhaps I should have waited until the blondies were absolutely and completely cool before cutting and enjoying – maybe like 8 or so hours! As it was, I did let them cool before cutting, but the chocolate chips were still gooey; the batter in the very middle of the blondies was even gooier than the chocolate chips!
Okay, so all that aside, how do they taste? They taste great! I’d recommend them to anyone, as long as they can bake a proper blondie! :)
In closing, if anyone reading this has baked their share of blondies, what do you think I’m doing wrong!?
Apr 26
This isn’t really a brownie sundae like what you’d get at Dairy Queen or some other ice cream specialty shop. It’s actually just a brownie with ice cream! But still very yummy and probably much lighter than a DQ brownie sundae.
I still have no unsalted butter (waiting for our next trip to Costco), so I resorted to a box brownie mix. Okay, so I see some of you are gasping in disgust! Personally, while I don’t much care for box cake mixes, I actually do like box brownie mixes.
The particular one I used here is a Betty Crocker brand and it is a chocolate chunk brownie mix. I took a warm brownie slice, with the chocolate chunks still gooey, scooped creamy vanilla ice cream on top, drizzled both with chocolate syrup and sat a maraschino on top.
I think that whether or not you’re against box mixes, this brownie sundae looks quite irresistible!
By the way, feel free to use homemade brownies instead of a box mix! :)
Feb 25
I have become a frequent visitor to TasteSpotting.com. There are so many different types of lovely and amazing food on the website, I just start drooling every time I go there! This was where I found the recipe for bittersweet chocolate brownies.
To start at the beginning, I received a couple of bars of Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate in a chocolate haul I got for Valentine’s Day from my husband. I searched through my cookbooks and online to find a recipe using bittersweet chocolate, but most used semisweet. I began to crave brownies over the past couple of days and just today came across the recipe for bittersweet chocolate brownies (from Slow Like Honey), via TasteSpotting.com.
The baker, Amanda, at Slow Like Honey, claimed that these brownies were the best ever, and when I read that, I knew this was the recipe I would use my bittersweet chocolate for. They looked too tempting to pass by.
I did do a couple of things differently from the posted recipe, which is originally from Alice Medrich’s book Pure Dessert. I used a double boiler to melt the chocolate and butter, instead of sitting the bowl of chocolate and butter in simmering water and I used parchment paper to line the pan instead of aluminum foil. I think that my brownies are just a touch under-baked, although I went about 2-3 minutes over the recommended baking time, but I’d rather have under-baked brownies than over-baked brownies. I think my brownies are just extra gooey, but that makes them all the better, right?
Unfortunately, I don’t have any vanilla ice cream, or any ice cream at all for that matter, but I do think a scoop of vanilla ice cream would compliment a square of these brownies perfectly. They taste really nice, and I can assure you that I will definitely be making these again.
Feb 4
I found this recipe on the back of a Betty Crocker Ultimate Fudge brownie box mix. It looked extremely tempting, so I cut out the recipe to give it a try later on. Yesterday I pulled out the recipe again and ended up with this…
Betty Crocker Ultimate Fudge brownie box mix with a layer of cherry cream cheese in the middle.
They are very yummy and gooey. Some problems I had with the recipe was that if I had had a 9×9-inch pan, I would have used it so that the brownies wouldn’t have been so thick. As it was, I used an 8×8-inch pan and had to bake over the recommended time by a little less than 10 minutes. The top of the brownies became quite crunchy, which I wasn’t too fond of.
Another problem I had was that of mixing an egg with the cream cheese mixture. I presume this was to make the cream cheese layer puff up a bit, but while it tastes just fine and cream cheesey, the close-up texture looks like that of a baked egg, which sort of puts me off a little bit!
The recipe can be found at the Betty Crocker website.
The only thing I did differently with the recipe was with the cream cheese mixture – I mixed the chopped cherries into the cream cheese mixture last so that I wouldn’t squash and smoosh the cherries.
I personally think that the brownies taste best straight from the refrigerator, rather than straight from the oven or at room temperature. But try it out, and see what you think!
Nov 5
Before I begin this, you may notice that I baked pumpkin chocolate chip squares the day before yesterday. I placed the majority of them in the freezer and can note that they are freezing well. Now, I have leftover pumpkin and chocolate from that recipe and before the pumpkin went bad I just had to use it, of course. In yet another pumpkin and chocolate recipe. Don’t you just hate Martha Stewart and her yummy unhealthy recipes! 
Anyway, I’ve seen these baked on a number of blogs lately – Martha Stewart’s pumpkin swirl brownies. Here are mine, on which I sprinkled leftover chocolate chips instead of nuts. I like nuts, but not on any foods!
The main things I did differently, besides replace the nuts with chocolate chips were using semisweet chocolate chips instead of bittersweet chocolate; baking these in an 8×11-inch pan, which required a slightly longer baking time, I noticed (by about 10-15 minutes); using only 3 eggs instead of 4 because 3 was all I had.
Now, I did use the cayenne pepper and I personally think that 1/4 teaspoon is barely noticeable, and I’m very sensitive to such spices. If you do really want to taste it, I’d suggest adding a pinch or two more.
Oh, and I’ve placed the majority of these in the freezer too. They’re too good and too unhealthy to eat all at once, so these should last us a while.
I love the taste of chocolate and pumpkin together, so when I saw this Martha Stewart recipe for pumpkin chocolate chip squares, I had to bake it. I was reluctant to do so, with 2 sticks of butter and 1 1/4 cups of sugar! Wow! If you read through the comments on the recipe page there are a few substitutions to use to make it a tiny bit healthier, for example, the addition of applesauce to replace some of the butter.
Anyway, some things to note… I did not find pumpkin pie spice, so I used the recommended spice mix on the recipe page. However I reduced the allspice to 1/4 teaspoon, as I would have done also for the cloves if I had had any. In the comments section of the recipe page a few people also note that the addition of 12 ounces of chocolate chips was too much. I could see why, so I only added a little less than 3/4 of a 12 ounce bag to the batter.
To get some nice chocolate chips on top of the cake/brownie/blondie/whatever, sprinkle a few chocolate chips on top of the batter right after you have spread it out in the pan. Otherwise all the chips will be hidden in the batter after baking.
These babies are a gooey mess of pumpkin and chocolate! So tasty, so unhealthy, so gooey! They are definitely best cut into small squares because a big square is so rich it is likely to make your belly hurt! And of course these need to be chased down with a tall glass of cold fat free milk!
I had heaps of leftover chili chocolate ganache from my Iron Cupcake: Earth chili cupcakes, so I decided to try out Martha Stewart’s truffle brownie recipe, except instead of her semi-sweet chocolate ganache I would use my chili chocolate ganache:
It was more hot on the brownies than on the cupcakes; I presume that all that sweet frosting on the cupcakes took some of the chili sting out. But the brownies just weren’t sweet enough to cover up the chili that much! But, overall, this was a very tasty dessert.
Jamieanne has a passion for food and baking that dates back to her early childhood. She is the author of The Sweetest Kitchen blog, which features her favorite recipes from magazines, cookbooks and other food blogs. Keep up to date with Jamieanne and her blog by following on:
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