Dessert of the Week: Double Brownies

We had a wonderful family party this weekend, and I got to do treats! Making dessert for 16 people, however, was something I haven't tried before. I looked up fun recipes all week, and finally decided on doing two kinds of brownies: red velvet cheesecake brownies (we love red velvet in my family) and rocky road brownies (my dad cannot come to Utah without getting BYU creamery rocky road ice cream at least once!). I started by laying out all the ingredients on my counter because I wanted to document just how huge this task was going to be.

I definitely got out some things without realizing they were not in the recipes: baking soda, brown sugar, marshmallows (in case the fluff didn't work out!), chocolate chips (what? I didn't use those? that's a first). But it was still so much! 3 cubes of butter, shortening, 9 eggs, almost half my cocoa, I even got to open my apple cider vinegar for this (why do I have that and haven't used it? Who knows...)

The two recipes I chose were Red Velvet Brownies from Freutcake and Rocky Road Brownies from The Royal Cook. That recipe calls for box mix brownies, but I wanted to try brownies from scratch, so I also used Trisha Yearwood's Brownies from Heidi Bakes.

(Red Velvet Brownies from Freutcake)

(Rocky Road Brownies from The Royal Cook)

(Trisha Yearwood's Brownies from Heidi Bakes)

Overall, I was SO happy with how everything turned out. I doubled both recipes, and made a 9x13 of each kind of brownie. There were only a few mishaps: the red velvet brownies recipe called for 8 ounces of cream cheese, so doubling it would use 16 ounces (2 boxes of cream cheese). However, we almost never have cream cheese, and so what I had was a half box, or 4 ounces. The brownies were fine, but everyone preferred the rocky road ones and I think it was because the red ones were a bit dry without the extra cream cheese topping. 

My other mishap also contributed to dry red velvet brownies. I LOVE when recipes describe the process and the texture/consistency of how it should all look. Not being a chemist or a very experienced cook, I rarely know when a recipe is "right"- like how much baking powder will make something rise, or how sticky or smooth a dough should be. When I put together the Trisha Yearwood's brownies, the dough was almost more like fudge: I had a hard time spreading it into the pan. These brownies baked in only 30 minutes and were very dense and fudgy. The red velvet brownie batter was almost completely liquid and it probably needed more flour or something, but I had no idea. They took 45 minutes to bake and were crumbly, more dry, and more cake-like rather than brownie-like. 

Brownies in the pan. This was probably the first time ever I haven't snuck a taste before serving dessert! 

The Trisha Yearwood brownies were my favorite brownies I have ever had, and I will be using this recipe for ever! The rocky road addition to the brownies was perfect- chocolatey and moist, with gooey marshmallow fluff and pecans. I will also definitely try out the red velvet brownies in the future and try to make them just as dense and delicious. And add more cream cheese of course! Overall, it was such a delicious weekend and so fun to cook for so many people!

Really bad photography. But we were too busy serving and eating to worry about pretty pictures!