Christmas Cookie Week - Brownie Bites

I know I have shared this recipe on the blog before, but it is a great tried-and-true recipe and you can never have too many of those. Our family loves brownies so I have to make them every year for the Christmas cookie plate. I thought long and hard about how to change them up this year and finally decided to make them into mini two-bite brownie muffins. 

I put chocolate chips into the batter rather than icing the brownies so they would be easier to freeze. Using chocolate chips might sound like a good idea, but I had my doubts when I tried to take the first batch of cooked brownies out of the tray. All the chocolate chips had stuck to the pan and most of the brownies came out broken into pieces. So I'm passing along my tip for how to avoid this problem. What I did was pour the batter into each well and then add a few chocolate chips on top and gently smooth some of the batter over the chocolate chips. That worked like a charm and the brownies all came out of the pans like they should after that.

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

2 squares unsweetened chocolate

1/3 cup butter or margarine

2/3 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

3/4 cup chocolate chips (or more if you want a thicker icing)

Method:

1. Melt chocolate with butter in microwave on medium heat.

2. Mix together flour, baking powder, and salt.

3. Beat eggs, then gradually add in sugar.

4. Blend in chocolate mixture and vanilla.

5. Stir in flour mixture.

6. Spread in greased 8-inch square pan (or muffin pans)

7. Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes or until brownies begin to pull away from sides of pan.  

You can can see my usual easy brownie icing here and my brownie s'more version here.

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Don't forget to come back every day this week to see what other cookies and squares I made.