Ice Cream Sundae Brownies

Yeah, I thought it was about time for something sweet 🙂

This recipe is super easy because it uses – shhh – a box mix. Yeah, yeah. I know. “But, Arya, didn’t you say that you wanted to make things from scratch? Learn how to be self sufficient in the kitchen – remember? You know, the whole point of your blog?”

Shh. We’re forgetting that part momentarily…

Because while I was spending the usual hours (and I do mean hours…those food sites are addicting. Seriously. I need a support group or something – Hi, I’m Arya and I’m addicted to food blogs…) browsing various sites, I stumbled upon this recipe from Picky Palate (a fantastic site!), and I had to try it.

I mean, seriously. It combines two of my favorite desserts (well, actually, every dessert I’ve tried so far is my favorite dessert. But, hey, why leave one out? This way they’re all included in my ever-hungry stomach!)  – ice cream and brownies!

I overbaked mine a tad (lesson learned – don’t do that!), but it was still quite good. This was a dense, sweet brownie 🙂 I didn’t really taste the ice cream at all, but the brownie tasted sweeter, so I suppose that’s where it’s from. The chocolate melted and made pleasant pools of gooey chocolate scattered throughout.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering..camera status is still bad. Sigh. Only I could completely break a camera in the first couple of days. So, looks like it’ll be iPad pictures until I get around to getting it fixed (sorry!).

Recipe fits a 9×13 pan.

Rating – 6.8/10

Difficulty Level – Easy

Total Time: 50 min (Prep Time=10 min, Cook Time=40 min)

Ingredients

• 1 box Brownie Mix
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 Cup canola or vegetable oil
• Heaping 1/2 Cup of your favorite Ice Cream (I used Haagen Dazs vanilla)
• 1 1/2 Cups chocolate chips OR 9 squares of chocolate/2 bars of chocolate (i.e., Hershey)
• 1/4 Cup chilled hot fudge topping

Directions

1) Preheat oven to 350˚F

2) In a large bowl, mix the brownie mix, eggs, and oil (no water).

3) Scoop in ice cream, chocolate chips/chocolate chunks and hot fudge; mix until combined.

4) Pour into greased 9×13 baking dish

5) Bake for 40-50 minutes or until toothpick comes clean from center. (don’t overbake, though!)

Enjoy! Optional: put some homemade rice krispies on top! It makes the brownie that much better!

Chocolate Cobbler Mishap – aka, so-dense-it’s-lethal

You see that delicious looking picture up there?

You see it? Looks yummy, doesn’t it? Nice and oozing with smooth chocolate syrup?

LIES.

I’m starting to think I’m cursed. Yes I am allowed to be over dramatic. This is the second recipe mishap in a row. Sigh. But on the bright side – I got my new camera in the mail today! 🙂 No more iPad pictures! 😀

Anyway, back to the recipe. I was so excited for this recipe – the reviews were glowing, the ingredients were simple, I absolutely LOVELOVELOVE the blog it’s from, and hey – it’s chocolate.

Looking back, I think know it’s my fault it turned out that way. You see, I doubled it so it would fit a 9×13 pan. Since I still have absolutely no idea what I’m doing in the kitchen am relatively new to baking/cooking in general, I have no idea if there’s some sort of ratio of liquid to flour I’m supposed to use or something? I just doubled it, using my handy dandy fraction skills – hey, elementary school was good for something! That’s the only thing I can think of. So, actually, the moral is – don’t dismiss this recipe just because of my baking curse (let’s call it Deborah, shall we?). There’s a reason for all those glowing reviews. I may retry this recipe later, once I finally vanquish Deborah. One post said the batter should be the consistency of a slightly-thick, but still liquid  brownie batter. Mine was literally a huge ball of sticky brown dough. Oops. I also ran out of brown sugar, and instead of substituting in regular white sugar to make up the difference like any normal person, I kind of just dumped in the little brown sugar I had and called it a day; of course, the product wasn’t sweet at all.

Yeah, I’m lazy.

The recipe I’ve provided below is the original (so it won’t be enough for a 9×13) because my alterations were such a failure haha 🙂

Recipe from How Sweat Eats

Rating – 4/10 (note – that’s just my personal experience! I’ll go back and edit this if I try it again and actually succeed 🙂 )

Difficulty Level – Easy

Total Time: 50 min (Prep Time=10 min, Cook Time=40 min)

Ingredients

• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons plus 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup milk
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1-3/4 cups hot water

Directions

1) Preheat oven to 350˚F

2) In a bowl, combine the flour, salt, baking powder, white sugar and 2 tablespoons cocoa.

3) Stir in milk and oil. This is the point I realized that maybe it shouldn’t look like a giant blob of unmoving brownness.

4) Pour into a baking dish. Well, my giant blob wasn’t getting poured anytime soon. So I eventually just shoved it in with my hands and smooshed it around the pan until it covered it. It was not fun. It was sticky.

5) Combine the brown sugar and remaining cocoa and sprinkle over batter evenly. Please ignore the giant chunks of brown sugar I was too lazy to crush.

6) Pour hot water over top (do not stir).

7) Bake for 40-45 minutes.

Sigh. Why must you look so good but taste so bad?!

*Note: I have nothing against the name Deborah. It was just the first name I thought of

Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies

Are you drooling yet? 🙂

So, in my journey in becoming a decent cook, I’ve been hitting all the basics. The next post is another comfort food staple ;D

Chocolate chip cookies. Mm…crumbly, buttery goodness with dotted velvety rich chocolate morsels. Yum. After turning to my trusty google, I settled on another recipe from allrecipes.com. This was actually pretty good. I altered the recipe only a very tiny bit (the only major thing was to omit the walnuts. I’m sure with the nuts the cookies would be that much better, but I’m allergic to them so 😦 ). The batter was very easy to whip up, although there was a bit of stress involved to the butter – I’d read countless comments warning not to let the butter get too warm! In my head, I guess I was imagining some sort of OHMYGAWDAPOCALYPSE caused by rampant, oozing butter. Looking back, I’ll concede that maybe my concerns were a lot little unfounded. Anyway.

As I’m still learning how to cook, I have yet to figure out how to use the electric mixer (ugh). So, when the recipe said to cream some of the ingredients, I was at a loss. Back to google! I ended up first trying to use a metal fork, but soon gave up with that. Then I went with a metal spoon (a wooden spoon would work even better!). It took a bit longer, but eventually it worked 🙂

To soften the butter, I turned to google (again. Are you sensing a trend? ;D). I hadn’t planned ahead at all As my right as a unprepared artistically creative cook, I decided to make chocolate chip cookies as a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing, and thus hadn’t thought to soften the butter on the countertop for an hour. There was no way I was going to wait that long, so I looked it up and decided to cut it up into chunks. Then I let it sit for around 8 minutes (it’s summer! It’s hot), and it softened 🙂

Be warned – this batter makes a lot. The recipe only says it makes 24 cookies, but I actually had to make 3 batches (each with around 12 cookies). There were a lot. I had to walk to my friends’ houses (without warning) and just shoved them in their faces. I cannot be trusted with cookies. Also, this batter creates very thick, almost-cakey cookies. If you want a more crunchy cookie, put a smaller amount on the pan and sort of mush them so they’ll be wider. In my first batch, I put way too much, so they almost ended up looking like muffin tops. They were still yummy, but the texture was a bit off. My second and third batches were perfect though!

Rating: 7.5/10

Difficulty Level: Easy

Total Time: 35 minutes (Prep Time=20 min, Cook Time=15 min)

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, softened (2 sticks)
• 1 cup white sugar
  
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons hot water
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Directions

1) Preheat oven to 350˚F (175˚C)

2) Cream together the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar until smooth.

As I said, I had to do it by hand. It first looked kind of clumpy, so I switched to a spoon.

Ta da! 🙂

3) Beat in the eggs.

4) Stir in the vanilla.

5) Dissolve baking soda in hot water (I ended up microwaving it in a mug). Add it to the batter along with salt.

6) Stir in flour and chocolate chips.

7) Drop in small dollops onto the baking sheet.

8) Bake for about 10-15 minutes (I needed 15) or until golden-brown.

“Best Brownies”

So, today I was completely craving brownies. Like, full out I NEED IT NOW OR I WILL DIEEE (okay, maybe not that bad – but hey, it was close!). So, I did what any other person would do – I turned to google. After looking up several recipes and reading their reviews, I settled on the basic brownie from Allrecipes.com. I’m still very much a novice (and when I say novice, I completely mean novice) baker, so I left the recipe mostly alone. I’ve just doubled it (so it would fit a 9×13 pan) and changed the salt amount a teensy bit (I lowered it). The brownies turned out to be…well, they were alright. They had a strong dark chocolate taste (I’m more of a milk chocolate girl, so maybe that’s it!), but other than that they were a teensy bit bland. However, they did have that crackly crust! The recipe came with a frosting recipe, but I chose not to make that.

Rating: 6.5/10

Difficulty Level: Easy

• 1 cup butter (two sticks)
• 2 cups white sugar
  
• 4 eggs
• 3/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9×13 pan.
2. In a large saucepan, melt 1 cup butter. Pour butter into a heat-proof bowl and stir in sugar, eggs, and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Make sure to stir slowly (I did it by hand). Beat in cocoa, flour, salt, and baking powder. Spread batter into pan.
3. Bake in preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes (I baked mine for 25 minutes – next time I would try 23/24 minutes)