As you can basically expect, the surgery went as normal.  You’d think that a boy of his age would welcome the fact that he could eat all the ice cream he wanted, right?  In this case, you’d be wrong.  He didn’t want ice cream.  He wanted ham and cheese sandwiches.  What!!!  Oh well, as long as he was eating, that was all we cared about.

He’s back at preschool today, so it is time to get back in the swing of things.  I realize I haven’t updated here in quite a few days, so here I am to tell you about these fudge brownies.  This recipe comes from the same person who gave us those double chocolate cookies I posted about earlier.  Those were lovely little gems.

In the latest issue of delicious. magazine, Valli Little introduced readers to Mandy Valsinger, who used to own The Chocolate Maven in Sante Fe, New Mexico.  In the article, Mandy shares a handful of delicious recipes, one of which is the following recipe for fudge brownies (and the double chocolate cookies I linked to above).

This recipe calls for 1 whole cup of cocoa powder, so make sure you use your absolute best cocoa powder for the ultimate chocolate flavor.  I used Droste brand, which is Dutch processed.  You’ll also see that this recipe calls for over 2 cups of sugar, so if you’re watching your weight, you’ll need to pass by this particular recipe!  Sorry!

Oh wow, so chocolatey, so fudgey, so delicious!  The interior was perfect (which reminds me to note that you should not overbake these, or you’ll lose that fudginess), and the top had a lovely crunch.  The recipe suggests dusting the brownies with icing sugar, which I did, but I imagine you could dust them with cocoa powder as well if you don’t want an extra hit of sweetness.

These are perfect with ice cream.  Just saying.

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Oh, how delicious these were!  And I was pleasantly surprised to discover that they tasted nice with coffee.  If you want to make these too, please do so immediately!  They are so quick to make and you’ll be rewarded with the delicious taste of gooey peanut butter and gooey chocolate in no time.

My only change to the original recipe was to divide everything in half and place the batter into an 8×8″ square pan.  I recommend eating these by the second day after you make them, because they seemed to dry out and harden after the second day, even though I had them covered tightly.  It shouldn’t be a problem to eat them quickly, however!

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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.

Now, the whisking was quite difficult!  The mixture was so thick that it got caught in my whisk and I couldn’t whisk it properly.  I would suggest using a spoon instead.

My next problem was that I couldn’t get the brownies to get properly cooked without the edges becoming too hard.  My brownies looked under-baked in the middle and over-baked on the edges, which were very hard.

And once again, my end product does not look like the picture on the box, just as in the chocolate cupcakes.  In fact, the other recipes I have made from Donna Hay never end up looking like the photos (this includes a chicken dish and a meatballs dish).  Which is a little odd.

The brownies tasted nice on the day of baking, although I have had better, and also I have made better from scratch.  But I did not like them at all on the second day.  They became stale rather quickly and even a short blast in the microwave didn’t refresh them well enough for me.

While I did recommend Donna Hay’s Chocolate Cupcake Kit, I wouldn’t recommend her Molten Chocolate Chunk Brownie Mix.  I can only hope the Chocolate Chip Cookie Kit will end my disappointment with the previous two kits, especially the brownies!

Have you tried the Molten Brownie Kit?  What did you think?

You can find Donna Hay’s dessert kits at Thomas Dux and David Jones (for $13.95),  Little Betsy Baker (for $14.95) and Donna Hay’s website (for $15.95).

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.

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!?

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!  :)

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.

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!

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.

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!