| I love brownies of all kinds, but I especially love peppermint brownies. I'm not a big fan of the Oreo cookie, but I do like Trader Joe's Candy Cane Joe-Joe's, an Oreo-like cookie with peppermint candy filling. However, an entire box of them is a lot to eat before they go stale. This brownie recipe is a great way to extend the life of a box of these cookies. The cookies are broken by hand into pieces, then stirred gently into your favorite brownie batter. The result is a brownie filled with slightly crunchy cookie bits. Yum! If you don't like peppermint, just use your favorite sandwich cookie! The original recipe is attributed to Ina Garten, though I couldn't verify that, and it made a really large batch of brownies. I scaled it back by using my favorite 8"x8" recipe for Classic Brownies adapted from Baking From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. |
|
1. Preheat the oven to 325 ° F.
2.
By hand, break up the Oreo or sandwich cookies into about 4 pieces each until you have 2 cups of broken cookie pieces. This will take about 1/2 a package of cookies.
3. Spoon out about 1 tbsp of flour from the 1/3 cup and mix it with the broken cookie pieces in a small bowl. This will help keep the cookie bits from sinking to the bottom of the pan when baked.
4. Line an 8"x8" baking with foil and grease it with cooking spray or butter.
5. In a medium-large glass bowl, melt the butter and chocolate together in the microwave on 50% powder for about 3 minutes, stirring the chocolate and butter mixture after each minute of heating (be careful not to burn the mixture) until the ingredients are just melted together.
6. With a whisk, stir the sugar into the chocolate/butter mixture. One by one, quickly whisk in the eggs. Add the vanilla and whisk again. Sprinkle the espresso powder on the top of the mxiture and stir it in. Gently stir in the salt and remaining flour, just until incorporated.
7. Switch to a rubber spatula and very gently fold in the cookie bits.
8. Pour the batter into the pan and spread gently to smooth the top and get the batter into the corners.
9. Bake the brownies for about 30 minutes, until the top is dull. Do not overbake.
10. Transfer the pan to a rack.
11. Cool baked brownies completely (chill first if you have time) remove them from the pan with the foil. Remove the foil and set the brownies on a cutting board and gently cut them into16 squares.
Variations: Feel free to use your favorite mix if you want. If the mix makes a 9"x13" pan, just double the amount of cookie bits and mix and a bake the brownies according to the package directions. Save out 1 tbsp. of mix to coat the cookie pieces with before adding them to the batter.
If you want peppermint brownies, but can't find peppermint sandwich cookies, just use regular sandwich cookies and add some peppermint extract to the batter in place of the vanilla extract.
|
