Cadbury Creme Egg Brownies

With Easter comes a lot of leftover candy. One of my favorites? The Cadbury Creme Eggs. The originals. Not the caramel version. Not the mini version. The originals. I also love Cadbury because they don't feel the need to change their commercial to be all fancy. Who doesn't love other animals trying to pretend to be a bunny? NOBODY. That's who.

So what do you do when you have too much leftover candy and know that you'll either get sick from eating it all in one sitting, or let it sit on the counter for weeks until it's stale (there is never any normal in between with leftover candy...at least for me)? You use it for baking! It's been over a year since I discovered a recipe for brownies topped with Cadbury creme eggs, and I've been thinking about them ever since last Easter, so this year, I finally made them! 

Start with 3/4 cup flour, 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, and 1/4 tsp salt. Whisk together in a bowl and set aside. 

Then in your mixer, combine 3/4 cup light brown sugar, 3/4 cup sugar...

...with 1/2 a cup (or 1 stick) of melted butter (mmmm butter)...

...and 1 tablespoon vanilla. You'll mix this together for about three minutes on medium speed.

After everything is well combined, you'll add in two eggs, one a time. Make sure you use real eggs and not Cadbury eggs. It'll throw the whole recipe off. Mix those in for about 20 seconds after each addition.

Then you'll slowly mix in the dry ingredients until everything is just moistened. And then, because there won't be enough sugar as it is, fold in 1/2 a cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips.

Then you'll spread the batter into a lightly greased 8x8 inch pan, and bake for 25 minutes at 350 degrees.

While those are baking, you'll want to cut your Cadbury eggs up! You can do however many you want, and I probably went a little overboard with it. The one nice things about the Cadbury's is that they have that nice seam down the middle, so they are super easy to cut.

When the 25 minutes are up, pull the pan out, push the egg halves into the brownies, and then bake for another 5 minutes so they set.

LOOK AT ALL THAT SUGAR. I'm not entirely sure how I didn't gain 50 pounds just by staring at these. The brownies ended up being super fudgy and delicious, and you certainly don't need more than a small section to satisfy your sweet tooth craving. The Cadbury filling was really interesting after baking and then cooling because it solidified. It did make it easier to shove in my mouth though. It looked like my coworkers enjoyed them because I brought home an empty pan at the end of the day!

Sea Salt Brownies

Let me start out by saying that baking while listening to a playlist I made of fun, upbeat songs makes it 20x more fun. It's probably a good thing nobody was around because I'm sure if someone was here and saw me dancing around while whisking some chocolate, they might think I'm crazy. But in reality, I just was in a really good mood and having fun with it. It's been a good week so far, and the second half of it will be even better. Hooray!

So anyways, with the one night I don't have plans this week, I decided to bake some Sea Salt Brownies! I found a love of sea salt in an ice cream with it and caramel (thank you Mary and Whole Foods), and I've been seeing a few other recipes with it in them on Pinterest. I had no real reason to bake these, I just really wanted to after finding sea salt for like, $2 at Trader Joes. I'll be bringing them to some friends tomorrow (including some who are doing something for a good cause, but that's a later post!), so I won't be having brownies sitting around getting uneaten. Of course, since I am baking these a little late in the night, I won't have a picture of one brownie by itself, but maybe I'll update this post later with a picture of one. You'll at least see the full pan, which is really what everyone wants to see anyways, one big block of brownie!

On a side note, I did make a realization the other day. I barely eat anything I bake. I may have a bite or two, or a slice, or a handful of whatever it is, but very rarely do I have baked goods lying around to eat by myself. I either give them to friends or bring them to work. And then I eat Oreos or Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. It's not that I don't like what I bake, it's just...the reason I bake is not to eat it. I bake because it relaxes me, it's fun to be creative, plus it gets people to like me. I'm serious. I've tricked every one of you who are my friends into liking me because I bake for you. Okay. Maybe I'm kidding. But you know that's one of the things you love about me :).

Moving on to the brownies!! Since most of the time my pictures never look that great because of the lighting in my kitchen, I decided to try using the camera on my phone because it's pretty decent. So let me know your thoughts on the photos and I may keep doing them that way :)

You'll want to start by preheating your oven to 350 degrees, and line a 9x9 pan with foil. You'll also want to butter or spray Baker's Joy on the foil so you can easily get the brownies off of it later.

Then on very low heat, you'll want to heat 1.5 sticks of butter (or 12 tablespoons) with about 2 ounces of semi-sweet or un-sweet chocolate that's been chopped. 2 ounces is equal to about 4 tablespoons. Chopping chocolate can be a little annoying, so I find using chocolate chips is a lot easier since they're already small!

Once this is all melted, you'll take it off the heat and then whisk in the rest of the ingredients one at a time. You don't want to dump everything in at once because it'll be harder to make sure everything is incorporated completely.

So first you'll whisk in 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder.

And then 2 cups sugar.

And then 3 eggs. I had mine sitting out to get closer to room temperature, so if the chocolate was still a little warm, you wouldn't have to worry about curdling.

And then 1.5 teaspoons vanilla and 1 cup flour.

Once everything is mixed completely, and the batter looks all fudgy and delicious, you'll pour it into the pan, and then sprinkle 1/2 a teaspoon of sea salt on top of the brownies. Yum!

Then you'll bake them for about 35 minutes until a nice comes out clean.

After you take them out of the oven, let them cool for about an hour, and then put them into the fridge so you can cut them up. That's more for if you're eating them right then. Otherwise, you can probably just let them stay at room temperature until you're ready to cut them up and eat them!

I'll post an update later about how they tasted and possibly a picture of one brownie by itself!