Magic Mint Brownies

I’m back in Alaska for the holidays and I would like to thank my neighbor for letting me ‘borrow’ their wireless internet. Now if you could refrain from stealing my identity, dear neighbor, that would be great. I spent most of this Saturday traveling to be here which means I became very friendly with xanax and its friend ativan and don’t remember anything. Though I do remember having a dream in which Dr.Oz was actually a woman and pregnant and I was trying to convince him to come clean to the world about it. Just TRY to interpret that.

Before traveling, Joe preformed in his senior recital and I was excited because I got to bake treats for the reception. Invite me to any major life event and I’ll be like CAN I BAKE SOMETHING?? DO THEY NORMALLY HAVE BUFFETS AT FUNERALS??

Joe requested I make the chocolate chip cookies from The Sweet Life. They’re not your typical choco chip cookie: they’re super thin and taste like toffee. They’re best right out oven when they have that magical ability to be both crunchy and chewy and chocolate-y and toffee-y. But they’re also good cold, just not as magical.

I wanted to make something besides cookies as well so I browsed through my baking books and settled on chocolate mint brownies. I’d developed an intense passion for peppermint hot chocolate and living above a Starbucks was not helping the recovery process. So naturally I was attracted to the chocolate mint combination.

I grabbed this recipe from my Fine Cooking cookie magazine I bought last year and this may be the first recipe in the collection I actually really liked. Plus I got to do the swirly icing thing that I had never tried before and I'm all about pretty swirly icing. Both treats went over well at the reception, though I think some were put off by the appearance of the cookies. “I think you forgot to put love in these ones” said BJ. Of course this did not stop him from making multiple trips to the cookie tray.

The brownies went over well too, though the recipe called for ground dried mint and next time I think I’ll just use mint extract as there was a trace of leaves in some of the brownies and I don’t want anybody to think I’m sneaking them ‘special’ brownies. Besides, if I were to do that I would feed them BEFORE Joe’s recitals. Then everybody would really love German song cycles.

I'm still hesitant to post the chocolate chip cookie recipe since it can't be found online. The brownies are on the Fine Cooking website though so check those out. I would post the recipe but the website has some good pictures demonstrating the swirly icing thing.