Chocolate Brownies with a Pretzel Crumble and Brown Butter Ice Cream

Welcome to my first ever give away! I was thinking about how every time I post ice cream, (which I love to make) I get comments on how much people would love to make it, but they don’t have an ice cream maker. Well, here is your chance to have a brand new shiny Cuisinart Ice Cream machine, and it’s on me!!!

They come, literally, in every color of the rainbow, (and white!). To enter to win one
follow the directions:

To enter to win you need to:

1) Leave a comment with the color you would like.

2)”like me” on the Heather Christo Facebook Fan Page

That’s it!! I will pick a winner at random and announce the winner on Saturday morning! Good Luck!!

Here is a recipe that you can make with your brand new ice cream maker: Brown Butter Ice Cream

These brownies were inspired when I was sampling the Brown Butter Ice Cream. There happened to be a bag of pretzels on the counter. I couldn’t help it- I scooped up some of the ice cream with the pretzel. It was phenomenal. A natural combination that could only be made better by one thing: chocolate.

I used a very rich and chewy brownie recipe adapted from the Browneyedbaker.com. Only, I added a layer of crumbly, salty pretzel crumbs to the brownie to give some contrasting flavor and texture to the dessert. Plop a scoop of brown butter ice cream on top and watch all of your cares melt away…

Chewy Dark Chocolate Brownies with a Pretzel Crumble, serves 20

Pretzel crust
1 stick of butter
4 cups pretzels
½ cup sugar

Chewy Dark Chocolate Brownies
1/3 cup Dutch processed cocoa powder
1 cup, plus 2 Tbs boiling water
2oz unsweetened chocolate, finely chopped
4 oz butter, melted
½ cup, plus 2 Tbs vegetable oil
2 large eggs
2 egg yolks
2 tsp vanilla
2 ½ cups sugar
1 ¾ cups flour
1 tsp salt

6 oz bittersweet chocolate chunks

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Prepare a 9×13” baking pan with a piece of parchment on the bottom of the pan.

Spray the whole thing with baking spray.

In a small pan, melt the butter.

In the bowl of a food processor, pulse the pretzels to a fine crumb.

Put the crumbs into a bowl, and mix the sugar in with the crumbs.

Add the melted butter and mix well.

Press the pretzels into the bottom of the baking dish. Set aside and make the brownie batter.

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Brownie Batter:

In a small pan, melt the butter.

In a bowl, whisk the boiling water into the coco powder and stir until smooth.

Stir in the chocolate pieces and the melted butter and oil.

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Combine everything in the bowl of a standing mixer. It will look very separated, but don’t worry!

Add the eggs/yolks one at a time with the mixer on, and beat until very smooth and creamy. Add the vanilla.

In a separate bowl, combine the flour, sugar and salt. Whisk well to combine.

Add the dry ingredients to the mixer and combine. Add the chocolate pieces.

Pour the batter into the baking dish on top of the pretzels.

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Bake the brownies at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out with only a couple crumbs.

Let the brownies cool and then cut into squares.

Serve upside down (pretzels up) with a scoop of brown butter ice cream!