Cookie Dough Brownies

About a week ago, I went on a double date with a friend and his girlfriend. It was great to see them both again. I hadn't seem the two of them for months, I want to say. Naturally, we caught up over Korean food (we do always seem to get Asian food). Since I hadn't baked anything for them recently, I figure I could make a whole batch this stuff and give some to the boyfriend and his coworkers. I tried a couple of bites and I was addicted. I cut them into bite sized portions to make it easier to store (because I apparently cannot cut straight) and I had 5 of them. RIGHT THERE.

They are really good. The cookie dough topping is great because it has no eggs in it, so anyone who is worried, no need to worry! Although the amount of chocolate chips said in the recipe was a bit ridiculous, I'm sure if I had actually added a cup of chocolate chips, the boyfriend's coworkers would have had sugar highs and lows. Probably not good for people who work in the hospital. All the boyfriend said was that the hospital how complain how I'm making them fat (their fault for eating them) and that it was too much sugar. I will agree, that was probably a little excessive, but I'm still going to make desserts. It's like a nice little thing to eat at work. I can't imagine college students complaining about free food.

I found the recipe while I was digging up recipes to pin on my board of things I want to bake. I've got some baking items, but also some cooking items. I've recently picked up cooking so eventually, I'll have post those things too!

Brownie Hearts

Ever since the summer before my senior year in college, I was participating in Yelp! and writing reviews constantly. Ever since I made it to the elite club, I've met some amazing people so interested in food and everything related to food. One of those people is James. He decided to start a website dedicated to food called FoodSocialist. I'll be posting items up there that I make here too. The ones there will probably have the super nice pictures that he takes.

Anyways, I made these hearts because it's close to Valentines day and everyone gets into the lovey dovey spirit. The hearts, the red and pink, and LOOOOOOVE.

I figured that for my first post, I won't post something TOO complicated on there. Since I don't know what kind of people will be reading, I wanted to make sure it was easy enough for a first time baker. In addition, there will be posts about food in SF and the Bay Area, and hopefully someday all over the place. 

Recipe (from Joy of Baking):
5 ounces (about 3/4 cup and 1 Tablespoon) semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 cup granulated white sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 large eggs
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt


Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C) and place the rack in the center of the oven. Butter (or spray with a nonstick cooking spray) an 8 inch (20 cm) square pan, and line the bottom of the pan with parchment or wax paper.
Melt the chocolate and butter in a large stainless steel bowl placed over a saucepan of simmering water. Remove from heat and stir in the cocoa powder and sugar . Next, whisk in the vanilla extract and eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Finally, stir in the flour and salt.
Pour into the prepared pan and bake for about 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with a little batter and a few moist clumps clinging to it. Do not over bake. Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack. Use a cookie cutter and cut out hearts. You’ll have the corners to eat yourself! It’s a delicious recipe.

Mint Filled Brownies [MSCC]

A very quick post. I just make these yesterday - 1/3 of the recipe, had to do some math, but it turned out pretty simple. I actually ended up with 5 cupcakes and they made great brownies to eat with ice cream!

Delicious choice! It was simple to get those mini peppermint patties, now I just need to find more uses for them! Boyfriend loved them as a nice addition to our dinner together. Very minty, but the brownie was still soft and fudgy.

PS. Great choice by MSCC and Rebecca!

Chocolate Walnut Brownies [sms]

This week's Sweet Melissa Sundays pick, Chocolate Walnut Brownies, was chosen by Tiffany of A Spoonful & a Heap.

They were super delicious and fudgy. I really enjoyed them and so did my friend who came from Southern California to visit for her orientation here at Cal. We certainly had fun while visiting SF.

slideshow | Viewer

Make sure to check out the rest of the SMS bakers on the blogroll.

Half Baked Ice Cream Cupcakes

So, the beginning of this month marked the beginning of the annual Ice Cream Cupcake competition by Cupcake Project and Scoopalicious. I wanted to make a couple of different for my friends to try to see which ones are best. Since this is the only week I'm basically going to see my friends who tried my first ones, I have to make all my best combinations this week.

I started this week off with relaxing since I just finished finals, but I have started to get back into baking again.

This is my first ice cream cupcake to try. This was inspired by the Ben and Jerry's ice cream flavor Half-Baked.

It starts out with a brownie cupcake [recipe below].

I added chocolate ice cream and chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.

Then I topped it off with some homemade whipped cream.

It's a great alternative to the real ice cream flavor and my friends and I thought that they were an AMAZING combination.

Brownie Cupcake Recipe

adapted from All Recipes

[makes 5 cupcakes]

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/6 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon baking powder

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Line a cupcake tin. You probably only will need 5 cupcake liners.
In a large saucepan, melt 1/4 cup butter. Remove from heat, and stir in sugar, egg, and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla.

Beat in 1/6 cup cocoa, 1/4 cup flour, salt, and baking powder.

Add approximately 1/8 cup of batter in each of the cupcake liners.

Bake in preheated oven for about 15 minutes. Do not overcook.

Rocky Road Brownies

Last brownie recipe. These Rocky Road Brownies taste just like the ice cream version! I love rocky road ice cream so I thought I would share these with my boyfriend. I enjoy the chocolate, marshmallow and nuts. It was just a good combination of flavors. I had broiled the brownies a little bit because I wanted the chocolate chips on top and the marshmallows to melt and brown a bit.

Pumpkin Swirl Brownies

This pumpkin swirl brownie was a nice addition to the mix for my boyfriend. It was something different not not completely out of the ordinary. These were really the prettiest brownies in the mix. The swirl of pumpkin gave it something different. It was lovely to make.

Peanut Butter Cup Brownies

These peanut butter cup brownies are another great combination of peanut butter and chocolate. The peanut butter cups were cut up and put into the batter for a great mix of peanut butter and chocolate. Try it!

Over-the-Top Brownies

These decadent brownies are somewhat too much. A chocolatey brownie with a drizzle of hot fudge and caramel on top. I was going to melt chocolate and make my own caramel, but I remembered that I still had some from the twix brownies in April. The stuff's still good! I had a piece and it was just sweet, but really satisfying.

Nutella Brownies

These Nutella Brownies are a comination of two things he loves - nutella and chocolate. I had made half of recipe and put it in the loaf pan and all the pieces have gone to my boyfriend. Therefore I am not able to judge how good these are/were. I hope he likes them!

Hershey's Brownies

This was the second item that my boyfriend wanted me to make for him, Hershey's Brownies. I know that this is one of his favorite brownies because last time he made it; he kept raving about how good it was. I decided to make this with Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa instead of the regular unsweetened since I know how much he loves dark chocolate. I cut these out into heart shapes because I love him lots. I also placed the frosting into a different container to have him frost himself since it won't ship nicely frosted!

Brownie Cookie

Today is actually my boyfriend's birthday. The package was finished yesterday and will be sent today and hopefully it'll get to him by Wednesday for him to share with his friends...or keep all the cookies and brownies for himself.

This past week was filled with baking so I'm a bit baked out. I've still got a King's Cake to make, but I'll be making an easier version found online.

These brownie cookies were super delicious. It's like a hybrid between the two and has the best of both worlds. Hope you enjoy them as well!

Black Bottom Brownies [sms]

This week's Sweet Melissa Sundays pick, Black Bottom Brownies, was chosen by Cynthia of Bakingtherapist.

Sorry for the super short post, but I am running very behind on my 21 items for my beloved boyfriend. This was number one on the list. Chocolate, cheesecake - what's not to love? Since I decided to half the recipe, I put it in a 8in cake pan, but not all the cheesecake layer decided to make it into the pan. That's why my cheesecake layer seems so small. Oh well!

Picture from senior year of high school.
[almost three years ago...damn has it really been that long?]

The next 20 days will be filled with chocolate recipes - nothing too fancy or special, just chocolate in brownies, cookies and fudge! Hope you enjoy them.

Make sure to check out the rest of the SMS bakers on the blogroll.

Secret Baker!

For the past two posts, I was posting what I had made my Secret Baker! Well, I got my package yesterday!

The box, shall I open?

YES!

I opened and found three different things in it!

All of them are so yummy! Thanks Julie!

Peppermint Brownies

Two weeks ago, I had gotten back a test in one of my accounting classes and I had gotten a 100%. I mean I can't say that I was expecting it, but I had worked hard in that class and studied with a friend and had gotten a good grade. I was proud of myself.

My friend, who hates accounting, had also gotten a 100%. I was so proud of her because she had learned all that stuff the couple nights that we had studied together.

Anyways, last week in class while we were learning something new, she had wrote on my notes, peppermint brownies. I thought that I would surprise with these brownies since she did do very well.

I know that you can't tell they are peppermint brownies because they dont have crushed peppermint candies in them or on top of them, but I assure you, this brownie recipe was amazing. It's so minty and chocolatey - its like amazing!



Peppermint Brownies:
[I made them in a 8 in round pan and also a ramekin for myself]
(adapted from this recipe)
Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon peppermint extract
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour the pans you plan on baking this in.
2. In a large saucepan, melt 1/2 cup butter.
3. Remove from heat, and stir in sugar, eggs, vanilla extract and peppermint extract.
4. Beat in 1/3 cup cocoa, 1/2 cup flour, salt, and baking powder.
5. Spread batter into prepared pan.
6. Bake in preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes. Do not overcook. [mine were done in about 20 minutes so make sure to check!]

What I also loved about this recipe was that I only had ONE pan to wash other than the dishes that I baked in. Also sorry for the lack of good lighting! I thought I would have extras for later, but I actually ended up meeting up with her at about 8 so therefore no light except the ones in house!

Also guess what I got recently! Thank you Karen!

Hershey's Brownies

So, I decided to bake for my brother's Cake Walk. Apparently the Cake Walk is some sort of musical chairs type game where you walk around and you get to a number and you can get a prize if you standing/sitting on a certain number that they call out after you already have sat down or something like that. Well, they were advertising on the newsletter on how they need people to bake cakes/cupcakes/brownies/cookies for them. After seeing that, immediately I thought that I would bake cupcakes since that's what I love to do. Thinking through a bit more, I realized that I would need to cover them because they need to go the school Friday morning, I though, cupcakes aren't the BEST idea.
So browsing through some of my favorite brownie recipes, I found that I needed some things that aren't that ridiculous, but I knew my mom would find it quite useless other than for me baking so I decided to skip those. I finally found one that only used cocoa powder. Being a big fan of chocolate, I also decided to add in a whole layer of chocolate chips. I can never have enough chocolate and there's no reason for me to have what I want.
I had found this on one of the blogs that always has great recipes. It's a great simple Hershey's Brownie recipe. I loved it. It was quite simple to make as well.

Pictures!

The whole thing.
closeup!

trying a different perspective...

<3 Nina

Twix Brownies

Normally I'm pretty good about predicting my time needed to bake and make the stuff I need to do.
This time, I was a little off. Actually, a lot off. If I had like half an hour more, it would have been okay. I feel like because I had to do my essay, I started later. Starting later = melting frosting and no time for Dmitriy to take pictures. =(

So these brownies my friend Matt was asking for - since like ages ago. They were basically made the same way as these, but decorated differently.

Basically, brownie mix. and twix. Thats about it.
Well the frosting was this recipe!
Ingredients:
1 C heavy whipping cream
3 tbsp granulated sugar
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa
1 tsp of vanilla extract
Directions:
Mix together.
Chill for at least 10 mins in the freezer, or 30 mins in the fridge.
Beat mixture until stiff peaks form.
Pictures taken by Dmitriy!

cupcakes.
cake.

NEED I SAY MORE?

Recipe for the frosting here.
<3 Nina