Best Brownie Recipe & Brownie Bites

My mother in law makes THE BEST BROWNIES.

The recipe she uses is found on the back or inside of the Baker's unsweetened chocolate box.

Recipe below copied and pasted from this site.

4 squares BAKER'S Unsweetened Chocolate

3/4 cup butter or margarine

2 cups sugar

3 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

1 cup flour

1 cup coarsely chopped PLANTERS Pecans

LINE 13x9-inch pan with foil, with ends of foil extending over sides. Spray foil with cooking spray.

MICROWAVE chocolate and butter in large microwaveable bowl on HIGH 2 min. or until butter is melted. Stir until chocolate is completely melted. Stir in sugar. Blend in eggs and vanilla. Add flour and nuts; mix well. Pour into prepared pan.

BAKE 30 to 35 min. or until toothpick inserted in center comes out with fudgy crumbs. (Do not overbake.) Cool completely. Use foil handles to remove brownies from pan before cutting to serve.

*The most crucial part of this recipie is DO NOT OVERBAKE, DO NOT OVERBAKE, DO NOT OVERBAKE. Even though this recipe says to bake for 30 - 35 minutes, I always set my timer for 25 minutes and watch them closely for those last few moments of baking.

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Normally I just make the Baker's brownies in a 9 X 13 and serve warm with vanilla ice cream.
However, after seeing The Pioneer Woman's pretty little brownie bites, I couldn't resist making some little decorated bites of my own.

I did not use PW's recipe simply because I feel so comfortable with the Baker's brownie recipe I've been using for years AND I already had most of the stuff - so that why I just made them my way. But I give full credit to her for the inspiration and decorating of these delicious bites.

I baked them in a small muffin tin and it only took 15 MINUTES for them to cook.


I then made a little ganache to ice them based on Ina Garten's ganache recipe. Click here for ganache definition if your wondering what in the world that is.

This is my modified version:

1 heaping cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

Heat in microwave for 30 second intervals until chocolate is melted and is well incorporated with the cream. Stir in between intervals.

It will go from looking like this...


to this...


I then dipped these gals in that sweet ganache and topped them with all kinds of decor.


Sprinkles, powdered sugar, pecans, almonds, chocolate chips, white chocolate chips - it was fun to see what I could come up with out of my pantry.

Note the gal in the bottom right hand corner - she has a little bit of everything on her. That was Stephen Grande's. I decorated it especially for him. If that's not love, I don't know what IS!

Hope you at least try the brownie recipe even if you don't go to the extremes of making the bites with ganache and all.