Not So Spooky Halloween Brownies

Halloween Ghost Brownies

This is my latest Heavenly Cake Bakers entry - Barcelona Brownies (aka Not So Spooky Halloween Brownies). Baker buddy Matthew suggested I call them Frownies - Perfect!

To be completely honest, I did not set out to turn these brownies into little ghosts, but I'll explain that a little later.

For now let's just go through the recipe, which you can find here. I suppose you could do this with any brownie recipe, or even a mix if you like... just have some fun!

Oh, oh, oh... I want to quickly mention how in love I am with my new BeaterBlade attachment for my KitchenAid. I'll write much more about it once I've had a chance to use it more, but my initial feelings are WOW! No more stopping to scrape the mixer bowl... something I loathed doing!

That being said, the recipe for these brownies instructs the use of the whip attachment (if using a stand mixer), but I used the BeaterBlade and it mixed the ingredients perfectly.

Okay, the recipe starts by making a simple ganache from chocolate and heavy cream - set aside to cool and reserve for use later. Sorry, forgot to get a photo of that step.

Next, I melted butter and chocolate together. Easy, and you don't need a double boiler if you have a good quality heavy duty pan and a very, very low flame. Stir constantly - it doesn't take long to melt and you want to make sure the chocolate doesn't burn.

Then I weighed the remaining ingredients, but you can use standard measuring cups/spoons if you prefer. I opted to omit the nuts from this recipe... I like nuts, but I'm just not a fan of nuts in my brownies.

Okay, I combined the ingredients in the order instructed and placed the batter in a heavy duty quart size storage bag to easily fill my pan. I didn't get my silicone financier pan yet so I used a mini muffin pan instead - this recipe made exactly 24 mini muffin size brownies.

See how neat the zipper bag makes filling the pan? Easy clean up too... just throw the bag away when you're done.

Into a 325F oven for 12-15 minutes, or until the internal temperature reaches 194F.

Don't they look good?

As soon as the brownies come out of the oven, you poke three holes in each using a chopstick or 1/4-inch dowel.

You're supposed to coat the chopstick/dowel with oil to keep the brownie particles from sticking, but I found myself constantly removing brownie bits and recoating the dowel with oil.

Which reminds me of this quick tip - did you know the best knife to use when cutting brownies is a plastic disposable knife? It's true... absolutely no sticking! So I guess I'll start my search to find a set of plastic chopsticks.

Now it's time to fill the holes with the reserved ganache. I find this process a bit messy if using a spoon or pastry bag, but these plastic squeeze bottles make the job effortless!

See how neat :).

Hmmm... I had exactly enough ganache to fill each hole, but it seeped down into the brownies and left these odd looking open voids. Kinda reminded me of alien faces. Not very appetizing.

What to do , what to do...

(lightbulb!!) Since I'm not very fond of alien faces, and since it is October, little ghosts seemed more seasonally appropriate. A quick sprinkling of powdered sugar really helped to drive home the ghost theme... let's see if the kids get it when they come home from school.

(update - yes, they recognized the little ghosts right away)

Be careful not to poke those holes too deeply... I found little puddles of ganache under all my brownies. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to visit!

Strawberry Cream Muffins

MOIST Strawberry Muffins! This is a twist on a blueberry muffin recipe I have. I had an abundance of ripe strawberries on hand one day, so I tweaked the recipe a bit and boy, were they a hit.

In a bowl, dice the strawberries and sprinkle them with a couple of tablespoons of sugar. Stir well and let them sit and macerate for 30-60 minutes.

They'll get all juicy like this. Don't discard the juice... it adds wonderful flavor and moisture to the muffins!

In the meantime, bring the butter to room temperature. I didn't plan ahead well and all my butter was frozen, so I cut it into 1/2 tbsp. size pats and placed them in my mixing bowl like this. By the time the strawberries were all juicy, the butter was soft enough to proceed.

Whisk the flour, salt, and baking powder together; set aside.

Measure the milk; set aside.

With a hand held blender, beat together the room temp butter, remaining sugar, eggs, and vanilla.

Now it's time to start adding the reserved ingredients alternately. Add them in this order exactly, blending after each addition:

• 1/3 dry

• 1/2 milk

• 1/3 dry

• 1/2 milk

• 1/3 dry

(note - I've accidentally switched the order of adding the wet and dry ingredients and the recipe didn't turn out well, so be sure to do dry, wet, dry, wet, dry)

Now gently fold in the strawberries and all their exuded juices... every last drop!

I've found these particular muffins stick like crazy to traditional muffin tins (don't have any silicone pans, so I don't know how that would be), and they stick like crazy to standard paper cupcake liners, but for some reason, they don't stick to foil cupcake liners.

I remove the paper liners and just use the foil.

I save the liners to use for other cupcake projects.

Okay, into a preheated oven and bake for 25-30 minutes. If you like, you can sprinkle the tops with vanilla sugar or cinnamon sugar before they go into the oven. The kids like it, but I find it makes for a messier muffin. Tip, be sure the top of your muffin tin is well greased for easy removal. I really like Baker's Joy - it works very well.

It's hard to tell from the photo, but these muffins are really moist (sorry, bad photo). I sure hope you'll give them a try.

Strawberry Cream Muffins

makes 12 muffins

Printable Recipe

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened

• 1 cup sugar (use 2-3 tbsp to macerate strawberries)

• 2 large eggs

• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract (very important to use the best in this recipe)

• 2 teaspoon baking powder

• 1/4 teaspoon fine salt

• 2 cups all purpose flour

• 1/2 cup milk

• 1 1/2 cups diced and strawberries (macerate as directed above)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375F.

2. With a hand held blender, beat butter, sugar, eggs, and pure vanilla extract.

3. In a separate bowl blend flour, salt, and baking powder.

4. Mix as instructed above (dry, wet, dry, wet, dry).

5. Fold in strawberries and their juices.

6. Pour batter into foil lined muffin tin and bake for 25-30 minutes.

7. Cool completely before you devour... and you will devour these muffins!

Fun News - Bunny from Bunny's Warm Oven liked these muffins so much that she wrote about them on her blog. Go on over and take a look - I LOVE her photos!