Loaded Cream Cheese Brownies

I made these for Halloween with an orange cream cheese layer (based on a recipe found here) but you could use any color you want or even just leave it white and they'll still be pretty! Love this idea, my only concern is how long they took to bake - recipe says 43-45 but it look much longer. I lost track of how long I left them in but I'd say 55 minutes and even then they looked extremely underdone. As they cooled they did set up a bit more, and if you like your brownies to be on the fudgey side you'll probably find these the perfect texture. The inspiration recipe used broken oreos and chocolate chips on top, I added more things including snow caps, mini oreos, thin chocolate wafer cookies, white chips, orange m&m's, candy eyes, and halloween sprinkles. 

Side note - did you know you can bake oreos on top of brownies? I would have said no, but it worked. What didn't work were the white chips and candy eyes, they turned brown after being in the oven so long - but there was so much going on on top of my brownies you didn't even realize the white chips were no longer white! To serve, in our Covid pandemic world, I cut them in very small bite sized pieces, about 1" squares, and put each one in a small cupcake liner. That way it made for individual single-sized portions and no one touched any other brownie except their own. I also added fresh candy eyes for presentation and a few more sprinkles to fill in any holes. I didn't take a picture of the presentation, use your imagination - bite sized brownies in individual cupcake/muffin liner cups looks just like it sounds :) 

I used a brownie mix (I like Ghirardelli's triple chocolate, but any box that makes an 8x8" pan will work), adding the ingredients called for on the box. Pour it into a foiled lined and sprayed with non-stick baking spray 8"x8" pan. 

For the cream cheese layer: 

• 8 oz. brick style cream cheese, softened
• 1 large egg
• 1/4 cup sugar

Mix together with an electric mixture for 2 minutes. Add food coloring of your choice (optional, you could just leave it white) for this orange the recipe called for 10 drops yellow and 5 drops red but that wasn't near enough to get it bright orange. I stopped counting drops and just kept adding a mixture of yellow and red to get the desired color. Use your judgement. 

Add the cream cheese topping in big spoonfuls on top of the brownie dough, carefully spread it to about 1/2" of the edge. Add all the crazy toppings you want and bake in a 350' oven for 43-45 minutes or until set. Note it's hard to tell when the brownie layer is done since there's melty chips and the cream cheese layer to stick a tester thru. Mine were clearly underdone at the 45 minute mark without even having to test. Just keep an eye on them, maybe you'll have better luck with them being done around 45 minutes. 

Here's what it looked like when out of the oven - see how the white chips turned brown? Tasted fine and there's so much shizzle going on no one could even tell.

Coffee and Cookie Brownies

Dave had his ukulele group's 16th anniversary party* the other day and without much notice asked if I'd make something for him to take to the potluck. He didn't care what because he said people bring so much food that no one would even notice what he brings, it all blends together. Well I took that as a personal challenge of course and had to make something that would be delicious and noticeable. I saw this online at Better Homes and Gardens - simple ingredients, something different, and what's not to like about brownies and cookies all in one?

I cut them in little bite sized pieces and put each one in a small baking cup just to jazz them up a bit. When he got back from the party the first words out of his mouth were "well those were a bit hit - they were eaten so fast I didn't even get one, and I had lots of comments about how good they were". Yep, goal achieved ;)

This is just about the easiest dessert ever - you literally spread store-bought cookie dough in a pan.  and top it with brownie batter. No excuse people to not try this one, there are barely any ingredients!

Ingredients:

• 1 tube of refrigerated sugar cookie dough (16 1/2 oz.)
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 box of milk chocolate brownie mix
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1/3 cup coffee liqueur or cooled strong coffee (I used Kailua) 
• 1 cup semisweet or bittersweet chocolate pieces

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350'F. Press sugar cookie dough into the bottom of a 13x9 baking pan; set aside.
2. In a large bowl combine eggs, brownie mix, oil, and liqueur or coffee until just combined. Spread batter over sugar cookie dough. Sprinkle with chocolate pieces.
3. Bake for 25 minutes (see note below) or until edges are set. Cool in pan on a wire rack. To serve, cut into bars.

Note: the original recipe calls to bake for 40 minutes. I set my timer for 30 minutes and they were overbaked by about 5 minutes. Check them at 25, you can always bake longer if needed. I followed the recipe exactly except I sprinkled a bit of flaky sea salt over the brownie mix before baking - that little taste of salt every now and then is SO good!

makes 24 brownies. 279 cal each.

I crumbled up the tube of cookie dough and then pressed it out in  the pan. 

top with brownie mix, chocolate pieces, and salt if you want.

Dave's an original member of the "Southbay Strummers" - he's been playing uke for over 16 years? I don't care how long he's been playing and how good he is, we still have "uke-free" zones in the house!! HA!

two years ago: Easter bunny cakes

Mini Bundt Brownies

Sheryl made these brownies and they are fantastic (unfortunately she left me 6 of them and I'm pretty sure I'm going to need to eat them all at once and get them out of here so I can start over on my diet tomorrow hahaha!). She just used a Ghirardelli mix and didn't do anything different to change them...so it has to be the mold she used that made them better than my Ghirardelli brownies from a mix!

She baked them in mini bundt molds and it made them the perfect texture - crunchy on the edges isn't the right word, what am I trying to say...do you know what I mean? The edges are set and firm, and the inside dense and chewy.  Yum!! Also, she presented them on these pretty Wilton papers so they looked as good as they taste!

I don't own a mini bundt pan but I'm going to very soon...;) I didn't see hers but I assume it's something like this: 

Super Bowl Party Planner

My sister is going to a Super Bowl party and asked if I have any suggestions for something she can take - just to force her to read my blog and think about being crafty I'm going to put some thoughts on here and tell her to come check them out :) Here are a few things I have made in the past if you want any ideas:

- cupcakes topped with marshmallow buttercream frosting, tootsie roll footballs, and sprinkles in the colors of the playing teams. To make the frosting I fold marshmallow cream into buttercream - delish. The footballs are flattened tootsie rolls that I cut into football shapes and piped white chocolate laces on. I also added a little green colored frosting for some "grass". I know there is no way she is going to make these, she stopped reading this part at "tootsie roll footballs" I bet. Not hard tho so try them!

- strawberries dipped in chocolate, piped white chocolate to look like football laces.

- deviled eggs with chives on top to look like football laces.

-carve a round watermelon into a helmet shape, fill with fruit.

-a football stadium: layer 3 different dips next to each other (this is cheese dip, guacamole, and spinach dip) in a smaller rectangular dish, top with shredded cheese to divide the "field" and black olives (lined up to represent the players), pipe sour cream for the lines. Put into a larger container and fill around it with assorted crackers, chips, veggies, pretzels, etc.

And finally, a very easy idea is to make some dip (cheese, 7 layer dip, whatever) and put it in a plastic football shaped bowl :)


The menu for our party this year so far is (not counting the munchies hopefully everyone else will bring):
- mini pigs in a blanket (my friend Patty requests these every year) that I make with mini turkey smoky links and crescent roll dough (cut each triangle into 6 or 7 smaller triangles then wrap around the sausage, bake at 350' until golden brown). You can make these ahead of time and freeze, then bake from frozen - it'll just take a few extra minutes in the oven.
- pulled pork I'll make in the crockpot for sliders. This pulled pork recipe is super simple: rub a mixture of lemon pepper, seasoned salt and garlic powder all over a 5 pound pork shoulder butt. I put a crockpot liner in my crock pot for easy clean up and then put the pork, one sliced onion and a bottle of beer in the crockpot on low for 10 - 12 hours. Remove from liquid and shred apart using two forks.
- I saw a recipe for "Touchdown Brownies" on Pinterest (click here) - they are topped with caramel, pretzels and chocolate chips that I think I'll make.  I'm sure they'll be good, what can go wrong with brownies topped with caramel and pretzels - salty and sweet! I will leave out the nuts for Dave who is allergic, and so far I haven't found the football shaped pretzels so will use the extra butter snaps I have left over from making pretzel hugs the other day.

Oh, and I'll use this football runner I made a couple years ago for decorating the table - it's just a long strip of green felt with white electrical tape for the lines, and numbers cut out of a piece of white duct tape sheet (they have sheets of this now in lots of different colors that has a peel off back - cut out the numbers or letters or whatever then peel off the paper backing and stick to your project as needed).

it got wrinkled in the drawer,
hopefully no one notices!

The other thing I will do is print out a football pool/squares thing for the "gamblers" among us - click here for the one I'm using. Have everyone who wants to buy a square (or 5 squares, or 10 squares!) put their initials in one of the white boxes. After the grid is filled in (there are 100 squares), rip up little squares of paper and write 0 thru 9 on them and put in a hat, someone draws the numbers while someone else fills in the 10 gray squares across the top - then put the numbers back in the hat and draw again to fill in the 10 gray side squares. We like to give prizes to whoever has the correct score at first quarter, half time, 3rd quarter and then final score. You could also give prizes for other random stuff just to keep people paying attention to the game - for instance who is going to win the coin toss, how many times they show the cheerleaders, how many beer commercials there will be...whatever you can think up!! Have fun :)