Pretzel Crusted Brownies

Way back in March, my mom invited my cousins, sister-in-law, aunts, a couple of her friends, and me to a Tricky Tray fundraiser a coworker of hers was involved with. While it was a fun night, not one of us won a single thing. We made up for the losses by enjoying some wine and lots of bad-for-you snacks. I decided to give these Pretzel Crusted Brownies a try for the event:

Source: The Avid Appetite

I love the combination of salty and sweet and the added crunch of the pretzels intrigued me. I have never made brownies from scratch before and Shannon warned me that she has never had any luck with them so I was a little nervous about how they would taste. 

I started by making the pretzel crust: crushing up a bunch of pretzels (I used the plastic bag/meat tenderizer method), mixing with melted butter and sugar and baking it in a foil lined pan.

After about 10 minutes in the oven, I was left with this delicious looking (and smelling!) crust:

As per Rachel's instructions, I put it in the fridge to cool (resting on a towel). Then I mixed up the brownies using the same recipe she used (adapted from BAKERS One Bowl Brownies:

I have never been good at melting chocolate in the microwave. That's why my cake pops always come out horribly and anything I try to dip looks awful. I followed the instructions and let the butter melt using 10 second intervals, but it never really got the chocolate to melt completely. I kept mixing and mixing but eventually gave up and just completed the recipe.

You can't really tell, but there's chunks of unmelted chocolate in there.

Right before they went in the oven. 

Once I had the all the ingredients in though, the batter seemed to set up nicely. Here they are fresh out of the oven:

And after I let them cool and started cutting them up:

See that delicious layer of pretzels?

I halved the butter cream recipe knowing that I always wind up with extra frosting in my fridge and because I wanted to leave some un-iced in case anyone wanted them plain. 

The Verdict: They were alright. The crust was delicious and I slightly under-cooked them (which is how I prefer brownies) but they almost didn't seem chocolatey enough. I am not sure if that was my fault for not getting the chocolate to melt completely, or if I am just not a fan of homemade brownies. Now, that's not to say I didn't eat them. I did. They didn't really get touched at the Tricky Tray because there were so many other goodies there so I brought them home. And proceeded to eat the majority of them over the weekend until I finally had to throw them out so I wouldn't gain 100 lbs. 

Things to Consider: I would probably get the food processor out to crunch up the pretzels next time. Doing it by hand took forever and I think it would have been a little nicer if I got them a little smaller. I also would like to give this idea another try using a box mix and seeing if I like it any better. As I said above, they weren't bad, just not "worth" the calories to me - I would rather a nice thick, gooey, chocolatey brownie. I did love the foil method though - it made getting the brownies out really easy and cleanup was much easier too.

Anyone have a better brownie recipe for me to try? I have read that once you master making brownies from scratch you can't go back to eating them from a box-mix, but so far Shannon and I haven't found the right recipe!


Pretzel Crusted Brownies with Fluffy Buttercream Frosting
from The Avid Appetitefor the crust:
4 C pretzels
¾ C unsalted butter (1.5 sticks)
½ C sugar

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a 13x9” baking pan with foil, letting some hang over the edges. Spray with cooking spray or grease with butter and flour.
• Process pretzels in a food processor until chopped small, but not too finely. Meanwhile melt the butter in the microwave. 
• Transfer the pretzels to a mixing bowl. Mix in the sugar.
• Mix in the melted butter. Press into a the baking pan and bake for 10 minutes or until the crust has set.
• Cool in the refrigerator while you make the batter (note: I put the pan on a towel in the fridge so as not to break any glass shelves).

for the brownies:
*Adapted from BAKER’S One Bowl Brownies
4 oz BAKER’S unsweetened chocolate (4 squares)
¾ C unsalted butter (1.5 sticks)
2 C sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 C all purpose flour

• Change oven temperature to 350 degrees. 
• Combine the butter and chocolate squares in a microwave safe bowl. Microwave at 10 second intervals until the butter is melted.
• Transfer the butter/chocolate mixture to a mixing bowl or the bowl in your stand mixer. 
• With a rubber spatula, mix the chocolate pieces in the butter until they are completely melted.
• Mix in the sugar (I used the paddle attachment on my mixer, but by hand will probably work too!)
• Add the eggs and vanilla and mix well.
• Mix in the flour.
• Pour over the cooled pretzel crust and carefully smooth the edges so as not to pick up any pretzels.
• Bake for 35-40 minutes until a toothpick comes out almost clean, but with a few fudgy crumbs. BUT, make sure that the middle has set!
• Once the bars have completely (!) cooled, remove from the pan by carefully lifting out the bars from the pan using the foil overhang.

for the frosting:
½ C unsalted butter (1 stick), at room temperature
3 C confectioners’ sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 Tbsp milk

• In the stand of an electric mixer fitted w/paddle (or with a hand mixer), beat the butter until fluffy. Add the sugar, one cup at a time until completely combined.
• Mix in the vanilla and milk (if the frosting is too thick, add more). 
• Once completely combined, carefully spread over the cooled brownies.

Easter Recap

This post might be a little shorter than I originally planned. Over the weekend Joe dismantled our office and therefore our computer in order to get started on finally making it look nice (see home-related goals.) As a result I am on the laptop now with limited access to pics and no photoshop. I am going to do the best that I can with the pics still on my memory card...

I got home from work a little early on Friday afternoon and had a little photoshoot with JJ. Here are some choice outtakes:



Yes, I bribe my son with water bottles.



"Ok, enough of this Mom"

I decided to use this one and add a cute message. I printed out a couple copies to give to family we would see, and emailed it out to those we would not:

Saturday I started baking. My intent was to create this adorable "Carrot Cake" as seen in this pin:


Source: The Partiologist

using some sugar free (and therefore diabetic friendly) cake mixes I searched for. My plan was to use this recipe for the carrots and this one for the chocolate cake. My first issue was that I couldn't find an extra long loaf pan anywhere. So I went for the deepest cake pan I could find at (where else?) Michaels and after some brainstorming with Joe we thought to make two rows of carrots and just cut the cake down the middle. I should have seen the disaster coming at this point. I made the orange cake Saturday, let it cool, then used a pennant cookie cutter I had some a sports pack to cut triangles:

It was very very messy and pretty frustrating. But I soldiered on and froze the little carrots and before I went to put froze them in the pan. In between, I whipped up some puffy sugar cookies knowing that I would have some sort of backup. They came out delish:

Sunday morning, after JJ explored his basket:

You like our "babyproofing" of the fireplace opening? "Use what you got" is the motto in this house!

I set out to make the chocolate cake. I mixed it up, boiling water, chocolate shavings and all...

and poured it over the carrots. I have no pictures of this because it was a mess. They didn't really "stick" to the pan so they floated up a bit when I poured. Also, the chocolate cake batter didn't cover the tops of them. Still, I cleaned it up best I could and threw it in the oven. It took almost an hour for it to cook completely. By then, the carrots that had floated up were hard and it was very misshapen. I took a break from the whole thing and let Joe try and save it. I then made this icing following the tips in the comments by warming up the milk to dissolve the pudding mix and I still ended up with lumpy icing. This, I am ashamed to say, is the final product:

I bought oreos to make a "dirt" topping and cute little fondant leaves, but after two days of baking and this was the best I could get, I gave up on making it pretty.

I will say, though, that when cut correctly, it did make a carrot (sort of):



Although my baking was a frustrating mess, overall our Easter was lovely. I took a vacation day on Monday and the family just recovered, relaxed and enjoyed some playground time. I will leave you with a pic of my little man rocking his sweater vest and bunny bib while playing with his new toothbrush (if only he actually liked getting his teeth brushed!):

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday weekend! 

Egg Free Dough Dips

Shannon's Funfetti Cake Batter Dip is one of our post popular posts ever (her coconut oil hair treatment is getting pretty popular now too) - its not surprising, who wouldn't want to eat cake batter as a treat? Since we live a couple states apart, I never got to try it. I came across this pin from Willow Bird Baking awhile back and figured I would get to try a cake batter dip and a couple others as well.

They are all egg free so they are intended to be consumed raw.*

The annual Wine and Cheese Christmas Party I have with my girlfriends every January seemed like the perfect time to try them out. You may remember last year I made these chocolate gooey butter cookies for the same party.

I started with the chocolate chip cookie dough dip.

 

After I creamed the butter and sugar together, I added the dry ingredients. It was super powdery and I was afraid I was off to a bad start.

 

 

But after what I think was 4 tablespoons of water (added one at a time), I got a nice consistency. I made it a littler runnier than what cookie dough should be in hopes that it would be easier to dip.

 

Here it is all pretty and on my serving dish:

The other two dips went pretty much the same. Here's a pic of the powdery stage of the sugar cookie dip:

 

That powdery mess turned into this delicious looking dip:

I definitely used a little more than the 2 tablespoons from Julie's recipe. Lastly was the cake batter dough:

It looks almost the same as the sugar cookie dough but you can see the sprinkles in there. This one used more water than called for as well. Here is the final cake batter product:

Here they are all together. I had the perfect three-slot dish I use for my Christmas dinner mashed potato and sweet potato bar fixings. Don't they look delicious??

When I was at the store grabbing the funfetti cake mix, I picked up some chocolate teddy grahams, pretzels, and vanilla wafers as dippers.

The Verdict: They were absolutely delicious and possibly addicting. I heard a lot of "they remind me of dunkaroos" which just brought me back to middle school. I am not the only one who would take the tiniest amount of frosting with each cracker and then on the last one take the entire scoop of the frosting that was left, am I?

Things to consider: They were a little more work than Shannon's first post, but still pretty easy. With the exception of the cake batter dip, I had everything else I needed in my pantry. They were a bit on the hard side for dipping (I had them in the fridge after I made them but thought they would thaw out a bit on my drive to Hoboken). I was afraid the sugar cookie and funfetti doughs would taste too similar, but they had two distinct tastes. Also, each batch made a little less than double what you see here. What I couldn't fit got sent to my cousin Claire's new house on her move in day (remember her Now-and-Later Cookies housewarming gift?) for her and her helpers. All in all, I will definitely be making these again, maybe for a future book club.

As always, the party was a fun time. Thanks for hosting Mary Claire! I thought I was slick by "stealing" a gift this year but joke was on me, it was stolen from me too. I had a brand new silpat mat (side note: anyone have any experience with those? should I invest in one?) and cupcake carrier in my hands before it was taken. I wound up with a great gift in the end: a bottle of prosecco, a gift certificate for a great restaurant, and an excuse to go back to Hoboken for brunch!

Egg Free* Dough Dips
from Julie at Willow Bird Baking

Chocolate Chip:
Yields: about 1 1/2-2 cups cookie dough
Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt (a few people have found this to be too much; if you want, just add a pinch and increase to taste. I add the full 1/2 teaspoon and enjoy it!)
1 tablespoon vanilla extract (again, you might want to add this a teaspoon at a time to taste. I add the full tablespoon and enjoy it!)
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
water
Directions:
In a medium bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Stir in the flour, salt, vanilla and chocolate chips. Add water one tablespoon at a time (stirring between each) until the dough reaches cookie dough consistency.


Sugar Cookie:
Yields: about 1 1/2-2 cups cookie dough
Ingredients:
1 1/3 cups and 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup white sugar
1-2 tablespoons water
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Directions:
In a medium bowl, cream together butter and sugar for 2-3 minutes until light, fluffy, and pale yellow. Mix in flour and vanilla. Add water one tablespoon at a time, mixing after each, until you reach cookie dough consistency.


Cake Batter:
Yields: about 1 1/2-2 cups cookie dough
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup yellow cake mix
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup granulated white sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 tablespoons sprinkles
4-8 tablespoons water
Directions:
In a medium bowl, cream together butter and sugar for 2-3 minutes until light, fluffy, and pale yellow. Mix in salt, flour, cake mix, sprinkles, and vanilla. Add water one tablespoon at a time, mixing after each, until you reach cookie dough consistency.

*Julie does use the following disclaimer which I guess I should repeat. Clearly, though, I was not concerned: "Note: Since posting this recipe, scientisty types have also found that raw flour — just like produce — can carry E.coli if it’s been contaminated with it. This article suggests that the risk is even smaller than the tiny risk of getting Salmonella from eating cookie dough with raw eggs, but it’s still there and I wanted you to know about it. "



Easy Peanut Butter Cup Brownies

First things first: on keeping up with the resolutions - I actually woke up an hour early yesterday morning and this morning to work out. I have also been diligent with taking a vitamin daily. Obviously I have been keeping up with my one post per week goal as well. Lastly, I hit up Amazon for a Photoshop Elements guidebook and have slowly started to read through it (there are seriously like 100 pages of how to crop things - super intimidating!). I realize its only the third week in January, but lets be honest, in years past I have given up by this point already!

So in going through my post topic archive, I came across these Peanut Butter Cup Brownies.

These pics have been in my computer so long I had to look up the date on my calendar to remember what I made them for. We hosted JJ's Christening in late August (after a case of HFM disease forced us to cancel the original date) and while I had our post ceremony lunch catered, I made a couple desserts. The idea came from this original pin:

Source

 

that linked back to Risa's post in 2009 on her blog Baked Perfection. Once again, I failed to read the recipe before starting, and in this case it actually turned out to be so much easier than I thought. I figured I would be making some sort of major adjustments to the brownie batter and then making some fancy peanut butter frosting, but it really just turned out to be basic brownie mix baked into cups, with some peanut butter and chips on top.

 

Mixing up the brownie batter

Brownie "Cups" with their centers smooshed down



Dollop of warmed peanut butter

All finished

 

I decided to use a little chocolate frosting (the canned variety) in case someone didn't want peanut butter. A couple sprinkles finished them off.

 

 

The Verdict: Ridiculously easy. I overcooked them a bit (I always seem to when making brownies in a non traditional form) so they were a little hard, but still tasty. They are the sort of treat that is so easy to pop that you can wind up eating a bunch before you even realize it. And who doesn't love the combination of peanut butter and chocolate??

 

Things to Consider: The middles of my cups never really fell, which I think can be attributed to by overcooking. Other than that though they were pretty foolproof. Now that I am reminded of these - I might have to make them again!

 

 

Peanut Butter Cup Brownies, from Baked Perfection
Recipe adapted from Nestle’s Very Best Baking

Makes 40 brownies as adapted

1 box of your favorite brownie mix
1/2 cup peanut butter chips
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup creamy peanut butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray or grease 40 mini-muffin cups.

 

Prepare boxed brownie mix as directed. Spoon batter evenly into muffin cups (about 1 heaping teaspoon). Bake for 13-15 minutes or until top is set and a toothpick inserted into center comes out slightly wet. After brownies are out of the oven, wait for centers to fall. This will happen upon cooling. If not then tap the centers with the back of a teaspoon to make a hole for the peanut butter.

 

Place peanut butter in a small microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on high for 45 seconds then stir. While brownies are still warm spoon about half a teaspoon of peanut butter into the center of each brownie. Top with semi-sweet chocolate chips and peanut butter chips. Cool completely in pan.



 

Pretzel S’mores

Still going strong with the resolutions – two weeks in a row with a post! As an aside, Grace and I are both loving Instagram. My username is sborden86. Grace’s is gvk506. Feel free to follow us. We've been taking pictures of pins we’re attempting, among other things.

Okay so back to the business at hand - I pinned these Pretzel S’mores from Love from the Oven last week and couldn't wait to try them out.

Love from the Oven

I thought they looked so yummy & easy. And other people must have too, because the second I pinned it, it was immediately repined 20 times.

Christi had melted her marshmallows in the microwave but mentioned the oven may work as well. So on my first attempt, I tried making them in the oven. I figured I could fit more pretzels on the baking sheet then on a plate in the microwave.  I used Jumbo marshmallows and cut them up. I used half for each pretzel.

Then I put a bit of chocolate on top. I used a Hershey’s dark chocolate bar. I figured I didn't need too much chocolate since I was going to dip them in chocolate anyway.

I put them in the oven at 350 degrees for 4 minutes. The results were far from ideal.

The marshmallows puffed up way too much and poured over the sides. The chocolate slide right off – it was a disaster.  So I decided to cut down the amount of marshmallow I used for each pretzel and use the microwave. I used a quarter of each jumbo marshmallow and microwaved them for about 15 seconds on medium power. Once I took them out of the microwave, I placed another pretzel on top of each one.

This time the marshmallows didn't puff up too much. However, the chocolate didn't melt enough, making it difficult to place the second pretzel on top.

The next and final step is to dip the pretzel s’mores in chocolate. While I was melting the chocolate for dipping, I stuck the pretzel s’mores in the freezer to harden up for a few minutes. I dipped half the pretzels in milk chocolate and half in dark chocolate.

I threw some Valentine’s sprinkles on some just to make them festive.

Once the chocolate is hardened, you are all set to enjoy!

I was bringing these to a friend’s house so I threw them in a Valentine's Day tin I picked up at CVS.

Isn't this tin cute? I was surprised they sell this stuff in CVS.

The Verdict: I wasn't too impressed. The marshmallow/pretzel/chocolate ratio just wasn't working. It was difficult to balance the chocolate bars on top of the marshmallow before heating them up. Also, the marshmallow didn't taste that great coming out of the microwave. It doesn't have that same great campfire taste. All in all, they were a lot more work then I expected for not great results. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I definitely ate a bunch (can’t let them go to waste after all!) but I probably won’t be making these again. Christi’s looked great though, I was probably doing something wrong (as per usual ha).

Things to Note/Consider: One big mistake I made was not putting wax paper down on the plate I used to microwave the marshmallows on. They were very difficult to remove from the plate when I was ready to dip them. If I was ever to make these again, I would maybe try using marshmallow creme or fluff instead of actual marshmallows or perhaps try them in the oven again but on the broil setting.

Like s'mores? Check out the S'more Cups Grace tried a few months ago.