One of my favorite things to do is take regular, simple recipes and jazz them up. So then I thought, what's better than brownies? Brownies with a rich chocolate frosting that literally melts in your mouth. So good, and yet so simple!
Yesterday was National Chocolate Day. That is a big deal, and it calls for some celebration. I felt like baking, so my first thought was that I would make pumpkin bread since I've been meaning to for a while (no worries, it will get made and posted eventually), but then once I remembered that there is NO chocolate in that, I just had to switch to a recipe with chocolate. In come Chocolate Frosted Brownies.
One of my favorite things to do is take regular, simple recipes and jazz them up. So then I thought, what's better than brownies? Brownies with a rich chocolate frosting that literally melts in your mouth. So good, and yet so simple!
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Do you like how I positioned the cookies in the above picture so that they are alternating between light and dark, chocolate chip cookie and brownie? Yeah, I tried.
I saw these cookies on Pinterest, and right away they went on my list of things to bake. They are really easy, and best of all, you probably already have all the ingredients on hand. Because, let's be real, the worst is reading a recipe that is perfect for your current mood and easy to make, but you get to the last ingredients and it says "white chocolate chips" or "heath crunch" or "heavy cream". Great. That's just the worst. BUT, that shouldn't happen with this recipe, yay! I've been trying to stick to the fall theme lately. Things like pumpkin spice and apples pretty much sums it up. These are soft and chewy blondies sandwiched with an apple filling in the middle and a maple glaze on top. The maple glaze is just to die for; it really makes the blondie. The apple filling is also really good because you cook the apples with sugar and cinnamon and butter before cooking them with the blondies. I always think this makes a huge difference. The apples turn out softer and more flavorful.
Another note, make sure you allow the glaze to set for at least 8 minutes before frosting the blondies. It may seem like an unnecessary step because you wait for it to set up again once you frost the blondies, but the blondies do not have a flat surface, so if you do not wait the frosting will all fall towards the middle and down the sides. I am home from college for a couple days for Hamilton's fall break. Although, some people even just refer to it as long weekend because it is so short (4 days, but traveling home on one). Nevertheless, I am grateful that I live close enough to get to go home for even just a brief time and enjoy spending time with my family. My mom was so excited to see me, and of course I was really excited to see her and my dad and brother too. But also I was so excited to finally see my dog!
I decided to spend the first day home mostly baking. My parents are both at work and my brother is at school so I have the house to myself. That also means I have access to a DSLR camera again! I don't know if I ever realized the immense difference it makes to have such a nice DSLR camera to take photos. I would say it is vital for blog post photos. Not recommended, but necessary. Tis' the season! For pumpkin, that is. It's a little too early for Christmas cookies. Just to be clear, however, these cookies do not actually contain pumpkin. Instead, they contain the world's best spice, called "pumpkin pie spice", which can be found in your normal grocery store's spice aisle. It is most commonly made by McCormick. It's usually used in pumpkin pie, obviously, but it is actually great for many other uses as well. It's not anything really special, it is just a combination of many different fall spices together to make one spice. It contains cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, and cloves.
The combination of fall spice with the sweetness of natural honey makes for a really great cookie bursting with flavor. Make sure you chill your dough for these cookies. The dough is very soft and sticky, so you have to refrigerate it and then roll it into balls and bake. I might even refrigerate before putting them in the oven. That is, refrigerate, roll into balls, then refrigerate again before baking. Enjoy! I made these for an Apple Cook-Off for the organization I am a part of called Spoon University! How it worked is whoever wanted to that is part of Spoon University can bake/cook something with apples in it, then they bring it to the event and people come by and vote for their favorite one! I don't think I won because someone made apple spice cupcakes with caramel frosting, and they just looked so cute and delicious (I actually didn't try it because I was going to eat dinner afterwards, so sad), but it was a good effort. These were still really good. The secret? The tops are dipped in melted butter and then dipped in cinnamon-sugar. SO good!
Photo by Julia Gorlovetskaya It's been over a month since I've posted on my blog! Horrific, really. Now don't you worry, I've still been baking up a storm (although much much less than usual), but I haven't been able to post.
Why? College. That's the short answer. The more complex answer is that first I was living in the woods for four days being swarmed by bees, then I was being hustled from presentation to bonfire to meals and more, and then I finally settled in and realized I had brought no baking tools to college. So, what did I do? You guessed right, Oh, the beauty of Amazon Prime. I ordered a set of baking tools (pans, more pans, and even more pans) for a really cheap price, and now I have the basics. Then I went to Hannaford's (for the first time, they don't have them where I live), and bought all the basic ingredients, and more. Then I went to Hannaford's again the next weekend and bought more ingredients, and I think I've finally settled in. In this cake you will find three layers of rich, chocolatey brownie with a Biscoff layer and a malted Nutella layer in between, frosted with a salted Biscoff frosting, and finished off with jumbo chocolate malt balls and pulverized Biscoff cookies around the sides. It was so much fun to make! I have to say though, give yourself plenty of time to make it and make sure you're really in the mood to be baking for a while. It took a lot of hands-on time for me to make this cake, I said below about 2 hours, but that's just an estimate and now that I'm thinking about it that might be an overestimate. But nevertheless, it takes quite some time.
I've always wanted to try using honey roasted peanuts in a cookie recipe. It sounds so good. I mean, honey roasted peanuts are delicious by themselves, so of course they would be good in a cookie recipe. If you're wondering where to buy them, they should have them at pretty much every supermarket in the nut aisle with the peanuts. Planters makes them. I however used a Trader Joe's version, which I find are equally as good as Planters. These cookies are pretty simple. They're chocolate chip cookies with a little bit of honey in the batter and honey roasted peanuts mixed in. They create this delicious chocolate and peanut butter cookie with the sweet taste of honey. You can even sprinkle sea salt on top if you'd like, I bet that would taste good as a sweet and salty combination.
I've never achieved such a perfect texture to a cookie. These cookies are perfectly crisp on the outside, and nice and chewy on the inside. I feel like people say that all the time about their recipes, and then I don't really find it to be true. They are either completely chewy or completely crips, in my opinion. But not these. That means that both my mom and I can like them. She only likes crisp cookies and I only like soft and chewy cookies. Not only that but the flavor of these cookies is just to die for. Milky chocolate chips with toasted macadamia nuts. And if you;re second-guessing the recipe when you scoop them out and feel like they're going to spread like pancakes in the oven, because yes they call for MELTED butter, believe me I thought that too and they don't. They spread perfectly. I don't know how it happens, really I don't. In fact science-wise I want to know but am left confused. Nevertheless, all science put aside, these cookies are magical and you should bake them right now.
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AuthorMy name is Katherine and I love, love, love to bake! You can find all my baking adventures on this blog, plus you can follow me on Social Media by clicking below! Archives
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