Recipe #7: Ultimate Double Chocolate Brownies

Having some peppermint baking chips in my cupboard, I decided to take a regular chocolate brownie recipe and add the peppermint baking chips to make another mint brownie.  I chose to use the following recipe from the 2003 Taste of Home's Christmas Cookies recipe collection.

Ultimate Double Chocolate Brownies
3/4 cup baking cocoa
1/2 tsp baking soda
2/3 cup butter or margarine, melted, divided
1/2 cup boiling water
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup coarsely chopped pecans
2 cups (12 ounces) semisweet chocolate chunks

In a large bowl, combine cocoa and baking soda; blend in 1/3 cup melted butter.  Add boiling water; stir until well blended.  Stir in sugar, eggs and remaining butter.  Add flour, vanilla and salt.  Stir in the pecans and chocolate chunks.  Pour into a greased 13-in x 9-in x 2-in pan.  Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes or until brownies begin to pull away from sides of pan.  Cool.

The only change I made to the recipe was to add about 1 cup of peppermint chips to the batter and then I sprinkled the rest of the chips on the top of the brownies after they came out of the oven.  The chips did not stick to the top very well, so I waited until the chips melted and I spread them over the top the brownies.  Since the melted peppermint chips did not fully cover the brownies, I also melted about a cup and a half of vanilla chips, mixed in some peppermint extract and spread that over the top of the melted peppermint pieces.

The Review

on a scale of 1 to 5

• Overall Rating: 4
• Recipe Difficulty
• Rating: 2 (Mild difficulty)
• The recipe calls for a little more than just simply mixing the ingredients together with the addition of the boiling water, but overall the recipe comes together fairly quickly and easily.

• Taste
• Rating: 4 (good)
• The brownie has a good chocolate taste.  I could not really taste much of the peppermint in the brownie itself from the addition of the peppermint chips.  
• The chocolate of the brownie blends well with the peppermint topping.
• The taste of the topping reminds me of peppermint bark, which I guess it really is since it is a mixture of melted white chocolate chips and peppermint.

• Texture
• Rating: 4 (good)
• These brownies have a good, dense texture. 
• Just like peppermint bark, the topping is a bit firm and has a tendency to fall off while one eats the brownie.

• Husband's Opinion
• The husband likes the brownies and says that if he had these brownies before the previous mint brownies, he would really like them.
  

• Hints and tips
• Since the butter needs to be divided (in half), I simply melted each 1/3 cup of butter in separate bowls so I did not need to divide the entire amount after it was melted.
• Using my stoneware baking dish, I had to cook the brownies for 5 extra minutes (for a total of 45 minutes).

• Would I make these brownies (bars) again?
• I definitely would make the actual brownie recipe again, though I would make the mint topping from the chocolate mint bar recipe instead for the top if I wanted to give them a minty taste. 
• I don't know if I would add the peppermint chips next time, especially to the batter since it did not make much difference in the taste of the brownie itself.