Christmas Party, a Dessert Bar and Chewy Brownies

The other night Lobster and I hosted a Holiday party and had about fifteen guests, twenty platters of food, seven desserts, and chocolate treats here, there and everywhere! There was an insane amount of food and I went a little nuts and also made a dessert bar.



I made cute little mini raspberry lemon cupcakes, salted caramel cupcakes, almond toffee brittle "crack," peanut butter blossoms, and chewy brownies. Needless to say it was a sugar overload and everyone took home a doggie bag of sweets to enjoy for the next few days. Luckily for me, there were a few stragglers left behind so Lobster and I had desserts for the week.


While trying to decide what desserts to serve, I knew I had to make brownies. After all, who doesn't love brownies?! The question was, what recipe to try? I set out to find the best brownie recipe and my goodness, there are more brownie recipes on the Internet then there are hairs on my head. And jiminy Christmas, are people particular about their brownies! I like mine chewy but the combinations I found were endless - chewy, fudgey, cakey, chocolatey, cocoa-ey.....you get the idea. The recipe I finally chose was ironically called, "chewy brownies" from Cook's Illustrated. They're always a trusted source and deliver excellent results and this time was no different. The brownies were chewy, moist, fudgey, chocolatey and best of all had that lovely crackly top you usually only get from the box-mix everyone loves. I even refrained myself from eating or cutting them until two days later, since brownies apparently taste better with age - such self control I have! Where that self control went when it came to finally eating them - I have no idea.

While I can't leave well enough alone and know I'll still be experimenting with other recipes, this was a good starter recipe for a classic brownie. If you'd like to try a "fancy" brownie, try my all time fave Peanut Butter, Chocolate, Cheesecake Swirl Brownie. Enjoy!

*For the Chewy Brownie recipe, you can find it here