mint chocolate crack

a few weeks back, when i made my crabcake feast, i intended to make dessert as well. However, wine took over that night and dessert fell by the wayside.

but i'm nothing if not determined. or is it stubborn? no matter, either way, there would be chocolate mint bars...

the pictures are kind of lacking as is the story, but these may be the perfect fudgy minty chocolately crackness...



perhaps the only thing i can teach you, oh lovely internet, is that a pizza cutter makes an awesome brownie cutter :)

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Chocolate Mint Bars
courtesty of southernfood.about.com / Diana Rattray (with minor changes by me)

Brownies:
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup melted butter or margarine
1 cup sugar

1 ounce unsweetened melted chocolate
1 ounce semisweet melted chocolate
1/2 teaspoon peppermint flavoring

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

Frosting:
2 tablespoons softened butter or margarine
1 tablespoon cream

1 cup confectioners' sugar, sifted
1 teaspoon peppermint flavoring
few drops green food coloring

Topping:
1 ounce semisweet chocolate, melted with 1 tablespoon butter


Preheat oven to 350°. *
Prepare 8x8 baking dish by lining with parchment and spray with cooking spray for baking (butter/flour)

Combine eggs, 1/2 cup melted butter, and granulated sugar; beat well. Add the 2 ounces of melted chocolate and 1/2 teaspoon peppermint flavoring; stir until well blended. Stir in the flour; blend well.

Pour into a baking pan. Bake for 25 to 35 minutes. (tester should come out fairly clean) Cool on wire rack.

Thoroughly blend the 2 tablespoons butter and the cream; add confectioners' sugar and 1 teaspoon peppermint flavoring, along with the food coloring. Spread over the cooled chocolate peppermint bars.

When frosting is firm, spread chocolate and melted butter mixture over the top and swirl, if desired. Refrigerate until topping is firm.

Cut into small pieces, as the bars are pretty rich.




*note... my oven may have been closer to 335° or 340°... i didnt notice this until the brownies were taking forever to cook... but they were kinda awesome, so you may want to do the same and leave them in for 35 - 40 minutes instead... just a thought.

loyal reader contest!

guess what? you already lost...

cause the thing is, there's this guy at work - we'll call him Junior - and he checks this blog every morning. without being reminded. and it makes me happy :)

in honor of his loyal readership, i decided to make him something for his birthday... since he was the one who got nervous that someone else was going to take the brownies, i figured that brownies were the way to go...

that sounds like a good story, right? whatever, i was totally selfish in my choice. (shh, dont tell him...)

see, i was reading smitten kitchen and i saw her peanut butter brownies... and here's what i read:

"Beat together butter and sugar with an electric mixer at medium-high speed
until mixture is light and fluffy, then add peanut butter and beat until
incorporated. "

Um, so let's get this straight - you want me to first make the irresistable butter/sugar combo and then i add peanut butter?????



typically, i say that my version of heaven is a big Target with a Starbucks attached to it... I'd like to add an addendum to that and say that i'm fairly certain that it also has a big fluffy pool of butter/sugar/peanut butter right outside... (i used to think that butter/sugar/cream cheese was the holy grail... i was sorely mistaken. )

its a really good thing that baking is NOT an exact science, because i dont even want to tell you how much of that i ate before cooking it... both at that stage, then after i had added the flour and everything else... (I'm fairly sure i went thru half of a bottle of hand soap cause i kept licking my fingers and figured my co-workers and i arent really close enough for me to not wash each time...) even with raw egg... it was worth salmonella...

of course, this wouldnt be a post from me without a mistake, right?




see how nice that all looks going into the baking dish? all lovely and fluffy and tan. solid tan. evenly colored tan.

5 minutes after i put it into the oven, i realized that i was supposed to mix chocolate chips in there...





d'oh.

I contemplated leaving them out - who would know? however, in a moment of true perseverance, i pulled it back out of the oven and proceeded to mix those chips in... right there in the baking dish...

you know what happened next, right? yeah, half the chips melted... (which is why i really hope you didnt click on that other link earlier, cause this is one of the reasons that her pictures are WAY prettier than mine...)
but whatever... i figured that, while the asthetics may be off, the taste probably wouldnt be...

plus, the whole thing was going to be covered in ganache anyway...
(i was accused of using chocolate frosting-from-a-can on these. i can assure you that is honest to goodness ganache... made from callebaut bittersweet & semisweet chips)



and honestly, is ANYONE ever going to complain about peanut butter chocolate brownies??? regardless of what they look like??? seriously???

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last night i found them to be a bit too sweet - the kind of too sweet that makes you feel a little sick and wish for a big huge glass of milk and a banana cause your system cant take all of the sugar...

tonight, i found them to be pretty much perfect... i guess that banana i ate earlier made all the difference... or maybe it was the fact that i hadnt eaten half of a bowl of sugar/butter/peanut butter earlier tonight...

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Peanut Butter Brownies
Courtesy of Butterwood Desserts, West Falls, New York via Gourmet, October 2007, via smittenkitchen.com (with adaptations along the way)

Peanut butter 'brownie' layer:
2 sticks (½ pound) unsalted butter, softened
1¾ cups sugar

1 cup creamy peanut butter (good ol' jif or other normal brand. Nothing fancy needed)

2 large eggs plus 1 large yolk
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 ½ cups bittersweet chocolate chips (9 ounces)

preheat oven to 350° Line the bottom of a 13 x 9 baking dish with parchment paper and spray the bottom and sides with cooking spray for baking (or do the standard butter/flour prep)

beat butter and sugar together with an electric mixer until light and fluffy
add peanut butter and beat until you cant resist sticking your fingers in and trying it

beat in whole eggs, egg yolk, and vanilla

add flour and beat on low until just combined

Mix in chocolate chips (by hand)

spread batter evenly in baking pan

bake until brownies are deep golden - 40 to 45 minutes. A cake tester (fork, toothpick, etc) may still have a few crumbs attached... as long as they are crumbs, thats ok.

leave in the pan and cool completely. (may take a couple hours. may take a few minutes in the fridge if its late and you just want to be done already.)

ganache layer:
½ cup heavy cream

1½ cups chocolate chips (9 ounces) - half semi-sweet, half bittersweet

1 tablespoon unsalted butter, softened

put chocolate chips (1½ cups) in a heatproof bowl

bring cream to a boil in a small saucepan, then pour over chocolate chips and let stand for a minute or so.

add butter to the mix and whisk until all is incorporated (chocolate is melted and there are no lumps of butter or chocolate)

spread ganache on cooled brownies and let stand until set. Throwing it in the fridge may speed this process up... (i'm impatient. sue me.)

then cut and enjoy. makes anywhere from 8 to 40 brownies, depending on how gluttonous you are.

i have a reputation to uphold, afterall...

oh my god, the pressure...

what will my first post be? something old? something that i just hadnt had time to cover before now? something 'borrowed'? something original?

all those questions went out the window when i saw rk's brownies...

originally, i was just going to copy hers and embrace my role as a direction-follower instead of an innovator... but then i realized that i had no dark brown sugar. no bittersweet chocolate. and that i dont like walnuts in my brownies.






so i started looking through the apartment, looking at other recipes and then, most importantly, looking at my liquor cabinet...
(ignore the triscuits, zucchini and febreeze. none of them made the final cut...)









the part of this that i'm most proud of??? not the kahlua, not the frangelico... but the sugar...

(that would be white sugar mixed with frangelico and kahlua and then swirled in with some brown sugar... how good does that look? ok... fine... so i guess it sorta was the liquor that i liked best ;) )



but it gets better...




i took them into work, as 20 rich, chocolately brownies in my apartment would be highly dangerous... (fine, fine, i only took 11 of them to work...)

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the commentary by my cubemate?





to another cubemate:
"you should eat one of these brownies. It will make you smile even more than you already are"






and, upon recognizing that there was only one brownie left as another coworker approached and wondering if we should offer it up (ultimately, the other coworker left sans brownie):

"i'm just going to eat it cause i got really nervous when he came in here..."











i'd say thats a pretty good review, right?

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Boozy Brownies

1 stick unsalted butter
2 oz unsweetened chocolate
2 oz semisweet chocolate

1/2 c white sugar
1/4 c kahlua
1/8 c frangelico
1/2 c light brown sugar

2 eggs
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla

1/2 c + 1 1/2 tbsp pastry flour


heat oven to 350°. Line a square baking dish with parchment paper & spray with the cooking spray for baking.

cut butter into cubes. if not using chips, break up chocolate. put all into a microwave safe container & microwave on 50% for 2 minutes. remove and stir. if you are using chips, it may all be melty. if there are still some lumps after some stirring, put it back in the microwave (still at 50%) in 30 second intervals, stirring in between until all lumps are gone.

while the chocolate is melting, grab another bowl and mix the white sugar with the kahlua and frangelico. when those are well blended, mix in the brown sugar.

in your main mixing bowl, whisk together eggs, salt and vanilla until they are fairly light and airy. add the sugar and whisk some more. add the buttery chocolate mess and whisk some more.

put the whisk in the sink and grab a wooden spoon and then mix in the flour until fairly well blended.

pour into the parchment paper-lined pan and throw it in the oven for about 40 minutes. you know its done when the top is a little shiny and you can stick your fancy cake tester in it (or a fork) and it comes out crummy or clean, but not wet.

cool and cut in the pan, then transfer out of the pan (using the parchment paper as a handle) to a flat surface. this will make it super easy to get nice, square brownies instead of having to spoon out the first one ;)

makes 20 mini brownies or 4 really really big ones.