Maison Sweet Petite: July 2013

Hi!

I know that it has been a while since I have posted and I am sorry, but I do have a good excuse. No, my doggies did not eat my recipes! We had family in town for the past week. When there are two families living under one roof, things can get pretty crazy and the regular rhythm of life definitely gets thrown off track! Before the relatives came in town, though, I was asked to bake some treats to bring to a close family-friend's home in celebration for their daughter's graduation. After the graduate requested a chocolate dessert for her party, I knew exactly what to make.

Chocolate is fun ingredient to use in baking because it comes in many flavors and forms. The recipe I chose to make involves many flavors and textures of chocolate and turns into a melt-in-your-mouth brownie. But what makes these brownies soooo good? They don't use cocoa powder. NOPE! Brownies without cocoa powder, but with hot-chocolate mix. And YES....I use a hot-chocolate mix that includes those mini marshmallows. These brownies might sound weird and even gross, but trust me, nothing can compare to them.

How did I come up with using hot-chocolate mix for these brownies? It is actually a funny story. I was watching my brother many years ago and he wanted to make brownies. Ok, I told him, we would use a mix. Well, we found no mixes, which used to be a staple in our household. So my brother and I turned to the internet, which once again it came in use. We found a recipe called "Good Ol' Homemade Brownies" from the website http://bunsinmyoven.com. The recipe looked perfect and my brother and I set to work baking.

As we worked we came to the step where we needed to add 1 1/4 cups of cocoa powder. I went into the pantry and found out that like the brownie mix, we were out of cocoa powder. I didn't want to scrap the batter we had already began to make, so I did some digging in the pantry. I saw hot chocolate mix and decided it would have to work.

I continued making the recipe as it was written except for the last step of adding 2 cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips. We hit another bump. We only had about 1 cup left. I did some further digging to find left-over hershey bars that my family used for s'mores and some white chocolate chips. I chopped the bars and added enough of the chocolate chips to make another cup.

The final product? The BEST BROWNIE WE HAD EVER HAD! No kidding. Not even joking. :) These are some seriously amazing treats.

Now, my altered recipe is our go-to. We never use cocoa powder for this; only hot-chocolate mix. And you may be wondering how they went over at the graduation party. Well, I am glad to say that they were a hit! Not a crumb left.

Ingredients:
1 Cup (2 sticks) Butter
2 1/4 Cups Sugar
4 Large Eggs
1 1/4 Cups Hot Chocolate Mix
1 TSP Salt
1 TSP Baking Powder
1 TBSP Vanilla Extract
1 1/2 Cups All-Purpose Flour
2 Cups of Mixed White, Semi-Sweet, Milk Chocolate Chips (can add chopped hershey bars if like)

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9 x 13 baking dish.
2. In a small saucepan over low heat, melt butter completely. Stir in sugar and continue cooking for 1-2 minutes, stirring constantly. Do not allow sugar mixture to boil.
3. Pour butter mixture into a large bowl or stand mixer, beat in cocoa powder, eggs, salt, baking powder, espresso powder, and vanilla extract. Mix until well combined.
4. Stir in the flour and chocolate chips until well combined.
5. Spread into prepared pan (batter will be very thick and sticky) and bake for about 30 minutes, until a tested comes out mostly clean. The edges should be set and the center should still look slightly moist, but not uncooked. Cool on a wire rack.