brownie – Michael Makes

Dessert: Peanut Butter Brownies

Original Recipe: https://preppykitchen.com/peanut-butter-brownies/

It has been a while since I’ve posted a recipe. I have been baking, but not too much due to the heat wave we recently had out here in California, and I had to tend to my sister’s animals as well, but Toby is always worth it.

This time, I was in the mood for my favorite dessert combination: chocolate and peanut butter, and what better way to enjoy it than a peanut butter brownie recipe?

For this recipe, I put my camera on a tripod to keep the angle consistent, so the pictures will look a little different this time.

Alright, let’s start off by getting your brownie pan. Spray it with baking spray and line with parchment paper.

I think it’s supposed to be either one or the other, not both. This seems like a bit much honestly.

Alright, now that your brownie pan is greased and lined with parchment paper (you can probably get away with one or the other), prepare a bowl with about 1/2 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips.

Next, drop two sticks of room-temperature unsalted butter into your bowl.

Paula Deen approves of the butter to chocolate ratio.

Melt the butter in the microwave for about 20 seconds at a time until the chocolate and butter are melted together.

This honestly reminds me of the chocolate that you dip your bread into for breakfast in France.

Alright, so put this aside for now, and get your flour and cocoa powder ready. Weigh your flour on a scale.

I love having the exact measurements for each ingredient.

Next, tare your scale and add about 50g of cocoa powder.

I accidentally tared it after adding the cocoa powder, but it was 50 grams!

Whisk them together with a teaspoon of salt.

Now, take that bowl aside and prepare another bowl. First, add the sugar and brown sugar into the bowl.

Make sure you whisk the sugars together first! Very important!

Combine the sugars with the melted chocolate first in a larger bowl.

Next, add your three eggs and…1 tablespoon of vanilla?!

Mix it all together.

Once this is all mixed up, add the flour-cocoa powder mixture to the bowl, and mix it all up.

Next, toss in the remaining 1/2 cup of semi-sweet morsels, and mix it all up.

You can probably add more than 1/2 cup of morsels if you want, honestly I won’t judge.

Pour the brownie mix into your prepared pan.

Once you have it spread evenly, preheat the oven to 350F. While the oven is heating up, grab your peanut butter and drop spoonfuls of it on top.

You probably don’t need to add this much, but that’s okay, I won’t judge.

Use a knife to mix it on top of the brownie batter. You can have fun with it if you feel like it.

I was trying to go for a “starry night” vibe, but that didn’t work very well.

Once the oven has heated up, bake these for 35 minutes to give it a fudgy texture. It’s worth it.

I ended up going with a giant swirl of peanut butter on top.

Once it has cooled off, remove it from the baking pan and cut it into 16 brownies.

Once you’ve cut them up, enjoy them!

All and all, this is a very easy recipe, and you don’t really need any special ingredients, unless you count peanut butter. It’s very tasty, and cooking them a little less than normal brownies gives it a nice chewy texture that I really like. Plus, they’re great to make on impulse, so try them out!

Ingredients:

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter (227g)
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips divided (175g) (or however much you want)
1¼ cups all-purpose flour (150g)
½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder (50g)
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup granulated sugar (200g)
1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar (220g)
3 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
½ cup creamy peanut butter (doesn’t matter really)

Instructions:

Spray your 8″x8″ square baking pan with baking spray, or line it with parchment paper.
In a bowl, melt two sticks of butter with approximately 87 grams of semi-sweet morsels. Set aside.
In a separate bowl, measure your 150g of flour and 50g of cocoa powder. Add your 1 teaspoon of salt and whisk together. Set this bowl aside.
In another bowl, mix your 200g of granulated sugar and 220g of brown sugar together. This is to ensure you get the right consistency.
Pour the melted chocolate into the bowl with the whisked sugars. Add your three eggs and 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract.
Add the flour-cocoa powder mix to the melted chocolate and sugars.
Add semi-sweet morsels to the dough.
Preheat the oven to 350F.
Pour the brownie batter into your sprayed (or lined) pan. Make sure it’s even.
Drop spoonfuls of peanut butter and mix it around with a knife.
When the oven is heated up, bake the brownies for 35 minutes if you want them to be fudgy, and 40-45 minutes if you want a more traditional texture for your brownies.
After they cool off, cut them into whatever size squares you want.
Enjoy!

Source

Dessert: Cookies & Cream Brownies

Original Recipe Here:
https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/cookies-cream-brownies/

This weekend, I decided to make brownies, but I wanted to do something different. I was in the mood for something along the lines of cookies and cream, and I wanted something with Oreos in them, so I found this recipe for a cookies & cream brownie.

Alright, so we need to start with a brownie base:

Here we go! Regular good ol’ fudge brownie base.

You’ll follow the recipe on the back of the box, which is illustrated below:

Yes, we’re going to follow instructions on a box for brownies…for the most part…

Alright, so you have your brownie mix in your medium-sized bowl, go ahead and throw in 3 tablespoons of water, 1/2 cup of vegetable oil, and 2 eggs. It should look like the mess below:

Once it’s all mixed up with your spatula (or whatever mixing device you use, although a hand mixer would be overkill), it will look like this below:

You almost want to eat all the batter right there and then…

Set the bowl aside, and grab that 9″ x 13″ pan that we all totally have in our kitchens.

For the record, I’ve had this pan the whole time! Seriously! No joke!

After grabbing your giant brownie pan, preheat the oven to 350F.

Line the pan as best as you can with a giant sheet of parchment paper and then pour the brownie mix into it. Distribute it as best as you can while making sure the parchment paper lines up against all the edges.

This might be the most difficult part of the whole recipe…

After you’re satisfied with your distribution of brownie mix, slowly add in your double-stuff Oreos. For the record, you will need a total of 30 of them for this recipe, and 24 of them will go into the brownies themselves.

If you’re wondering, yes, someone at the factory put one of the cookies on the sandwich upside down. I had nothing to do with that.

Once that’s done, the oven should be ready for baking, so go ahead and throw it in the oven. I recommend about 35 minutes for these, despite what the box says.

Alright, so once that’s done, you’ll have to let the brownies cool off. You will need a few hours to refrigerate the brownie mix so that you can spread the next layer of goodness on here.

*In a French accent* “Several hours later…”

Now we’re ready for the next layer of brownie goodness. First, you’ll need a stick and a half of butter to put into your stand mixer with the paddle attachment.

It’s a buttercream base, so we need to start with…well…butter.

Soften it up as best as you can with your stand mixer.

Next, you’ll add your sugar, milk, and vanilla extract, and then mix it up.

Did I intentionally put pictures of myself screwing up on my own blog? Yes I did. As it turns out, if you didn’t get enough sleep the night before, you probably wouldn’t have realized that you didn’t read the recipe correctly and put in regular sugar instead of confectioners’ (powdered) sugar.

Alright, anyways, let’s start over, and put powdered sugar in there instead. Throw in a pinch of salt for good measure. I used about 1/8th of a teaspoon.

So now that you’ve been doing this correctly the whole time, and didn’t put in the wrong sugar, go ahead and turn your stand mixer on to low, otherwise you’ll get a cloud of powdered sugar in your kitchen. After it has started to mix up, crank the little booger up to maximum.

While the stand mixer is going, you’ll need to cut up the 6 Oreos I told you about earlier.

Once the frosting actually looks like frosting (and not clumps of sugar and butter), remove the bowl from the stand mixer and stir in the Oreo bits.

Do your best to not lick the buttercream frosting as well…

After you feel satisfied with your mixing, go ahead and bring it over to your cooled-off brownie slab and evenly add the buttercream frosting to the brownie.

Refrigerate the pan for another half an hour for the buttercream to solidify.

After the buttercream is nice and solid, it’s time for the final layer of chocolate! This step is pretty easy, as you just need about 200g of semi-sweet morsels, and one stick of butter cut into quarters.

I feel like I’m channeling Paula Dean at this moment.

Throw the bowl in the microwave for 30 seconds, pull out, and stir.

I was a bit nervous about this as well, as I thought it was going to be way too much butter…

I put it back in the microwave for another 30 seconds, and mixed it up again. This was the final result:

Yes that toothpick was for the brownies.

Go ahead and spread it on top of your brownie stack by just pouring it on and evening it out.

Let that refrigerate some more, and then you’ll have a completed recipe!

Here’s how it looks on a cross-sectional view:

There’s an Oreo cookie in there somewhere…

All and all, this is a great recipe that requires a lot of time, so if you’re going to make this for a dinner dessert, start early in the morning, or make it the day before. These took a lot of time, but honestly they’re worth it. It’s actually pretty easy, and doesn’t really use anything weird. The only thing you might not have on hand are Oreos, but everything else is stuff you can find in a normal kitchen, even in my tiny apartment.

Ingredients:

Brownies

One box of brownie mix from your local grocery store (9×13 inch pan brownie batter)
24 Double-Stuf Oreos

Cookies & Cream Buttercream

3/4 cup (one and half sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
3 cups confectioners’ (powdered) sugar
2 Tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
6 Double-Stuf Oreos, chopped (I use Double Stuf Oreos)
1/8 teaspoon of salt

Chocolate Topping

1/2 cup (one stick) unsalted butter
1 heaping cup (around 200g) semi-sweet morsels (or melting chocolate)

Directions:

Brownie Base

Preheat the oven to 350F
Prepare the brownie mix in a medium bowl as per the instructions on the box.
Get your conveniently placed 9″ x 13″ pan and line it with parchment paper. This will make it easy to remove the brownies when done.
Pour the brownie mix into the parchment paper-lined pan.
After evenly distributing it, add 24 Oreos in a neat 4×6 pattern.
Bake the brownie mix for about 35 minutes.
Remove and let cool for a few hours at minimum.

Cookies and Cream Buttercream

Prepare your stand mixer and throw in your 1 1/2 sticks of butter into the bowl.
Run the stand mixer on medium to get it softened up a bit.
Add three cups of confectioners’ (powdered) sugar, along with the 2 tbsp of milk, and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract.
Start the stand mixer on low so it doesn’t throw powdered sugar all over the place and make a mess for you to clean up.
After the butter and powdered sugar come together, add in the 1/8 teaspoon of salt, and turn the stand mixer to high. Let it run for about a minute or two.
While that’s going on, get your 6 Oreos and cut them into pieces.
Turn off the stand mixer after a minute or two, remove the bowl, and pour the Oreo bits into the buttercream. Mix it nicely with a spatula.
After you’re satisfied with the mix, spread it on top of the giant slab of a brownie.
When you’re done, refrigerate it for a minimum of 30 minutes.

Chocolate Topping

Grab a microwave-safe bowl, and add in about 200 grams of semi-sweet chocolate for melting.
Take a stick of butter, cut it into quarters, and put it in the bowl.
Microwave the mix for 30 seconds on normal.
Pull the bowl out and mix the butter and chocolate a bit.
Repeat step 3.
Pull the bown out again and aggressively until you get a picture-worthy bowl of melted chocolate.
Pour on top of the buttercream and even it out as best as you can.
Refrigerate for another 30 minutes at minimum.
Enjoy!

Source of original recipe: https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/cookies-cream-brownies/

Week 36: Brownie Cookies

I decided to do something that unfortunately does require some prep work: you need to have four eggs at room temperature, so making these cookies on impulse is unfortunately not an option.

For some reason, this recipe tells you to melt the chocolate and butter in a saucepan, but if you do that, you risk burning it. I don’t have anything special for melting chocolate, so I improvised by having a small pot with water boiling with another pot on top of the boiling water so it heats the small pot, thus melting the chocolate and butter together. The good news is that it’s easy to clean the pot with the melted butter. Just make sure you let it soak for a while.

Once the chocolate is melted, it’s pretty much like making any other type of cookie: mix sugar, eggs, and vanilla; add the chocolate mixture; and finish off with flour mixed with salt and baking powder.

Normally, this recipe makes these large brownie cookies, but I decided to make them smaller. I used my trusty 1.5 tablespoon scoop from Oxo to make smaller cookies. I baked them on aluminum cookie sheets lined with parchment paper for 12 minutes, and they came out amazing. They’re super fudgy, although I get that some people would rather just have brownies, but this is a very good recipe for brownie cookies that will surely be a bit.

All the fun of a brownie in cookie form!

Ingredients:

2-2/3 cups 60% cacao bittersweet chocolate baking chips
1/2 cup unsalted butter, cubed
4 large eggs, room temperature
1-1/2 cups sugar
4 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 teaspoons instant espresso powder, optional
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 package (11-1/2 ounces) semisweet chocolate chunks

Directions

Preheat oven to 350°.
In a large saucepan, melt chocolate chips and butter over low heat, stirring until smooth. Remove from the heat; cool until mixture is warm.
In a small bowl, whisk the eggs, sugar, vanilla and, if desired, espresso powder until blended. Whisk into chocolate mixture.
In another bowl, mix the flour, baking powder and salt; add to chocolate mixture, mixing well.
Fold in chocolate chunks; let stand until mixture thickens slightly, about 10 minutes.
Drop by 1/4 cupfuls 3 in. apart onto parchment-lined baking sheets. Bake until set, 12-14 minutes. Cool on pans 1-2 minutes. Remove to wire racks to cool.

Source