Scratch Brownies

When it comes to baking or cooking for an event, I'll take baking any day. Maybe it's because I have a major sweet tooth, but I prefer it since in my earlier young adult days, stuff from the oven always came out better than from the stove top. Ask my hubby. I was making my Mint Brownies(check them out in my earlier post) and didn't have a brownie mix. What's a girl to do? Find a good brownie recipe.

This one comes from http://www.allrecipes.com/ and I believe it's the best from scratch batch that I've tried in the past year. The two things that you may not be able to find locally (or of good quality) is unsweetened cocoa powder and vanilla extract. Sub in what you can, and pray to the baking gods for the best! By the way, these are not for those of you on a diet out there as you will see from the first couple of ingredients.

Most Awesome Brownies
1/2 cup of butter (that's 1 stick :) )
1 cup of sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8X8 pan. In a large saucepan, melt the butter slowly. Remove from heat and stir in sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Beat in cocoa powder, flour, salt, and baking powder (I used a hand mixer for this, but you can mix by hand). Spread batter evenly in pan. Bake in preheated pan for 25 to 30 minutes. Check with a toothpick for doneness and be sure not to over bake. Remove from oven and cool.

If you are ever out of box mix, give these brownies a shot.

Peppermint Chocolate Brownies

The title of this recipe should have caught your attention. Bunco comes one time a month for us Lunching Ladies and I usually try to make something new instead of using one of my usual recipes. Not that those are bad, but when I saw this recipe in an older issue of Real Simple, I had to go for it.

Wowsers! Am I glad I did because these are wanna-slap-your-mama good (no offense to the moms out there!!). Of course, when you try a new recipe out, my recommendation is to ALWAYS try a piece. You'll notice the lovely bottom left hand corner of the pan where I did....proof!

As I mentioned, this was a recipe I pulled out of a girlfriend's weekend article from Real Simple. OK, I'm totally breaking my rules with finding all local ingredients on this one, but I could have made without using my cheats. I'll let you decide! The best part about these brownies is that they taste like Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookies. No lie, people. I thought that I just come back from the grocery store in the U.S. where a group of Brownies had unloaded a box on me.

Peppermint Chocolate Brownies

1 box of brownie mix (Yeah I know, I'm definitely cheating. Use your best brownie recipe to sub in. My from scratch brownies have thus far only been successful when they are a la Duncan Hines or Betty Crocker.)

6 TBsp of butter, softened

3-5 TBsp of milk

3 cups of powdered sugar

1/2 tsp of peppermint extract

Green food coloring, a couple of drops

3 squares of unsweetened dark chocolate (You can use ANY chocolate that melts. I would recommend either Baker's or another dark chocolate bar)

Make the brownies as directed on the box. While they cool, combine the butter, powdered sugar, peppermint extract, milk, and a couple of drops of green food coloring with a mixer until you have a frosting consistency. When the brownies are completely cool, spread the frosting mixture evenly and refrigerate for 30 min-1 hour. Melt chocolate squares as directed and drizzle on cold brownies. Put back in the fridge until chocolate is set. Cut into squares and serve.

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I used a larger pan to bake the brownies, so this batch yielded about 48 brownies. That's fab when you need a lot of something and don't have time make cookies, especially in my house where I have a European sized oven with one rack. I like 'em cold, but I also prefer my Thin Mints kept in the freezer.