Bready or Not: Baileys Irish Coffee Creamer Chocolate Mini Muffins
I’m not ashamed to use cake mix every now and then. It’s fast. It can make delicious things. In this case, about 70 delicious things.
I doctored this recipe to use nonalcoholic refrigerated Baileys Coffee Creamer instead of the hard stuff, and I also adapted it for mini muffins. Loads of them.
These are bite-sized dollops of chocolate: chocolate cake dappled with chocolate chips, with the added smoothness of Baileys. Plus, it’s fast to whip up, especially if you have more than one mini muffin pan!
Since I bought a large container of coffee creamer (hey, it was a good sale, and I needed St. Patrick’s recipes, so…), you’ll see more recipes with Baileys featured the next two weeks as well!
Modified from Couponing & Cooking.
Bready or Not: Baileys Irish Coffee Creamer Chocolate Mini Muffins
Ingredients
- 1 box chocolate cake mix
- 3 eggs
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 1 cup Baileys Irish Coffee Creamer nonalcoholic
- 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips or milk chocolate chips, + additional for tops, if desired
Instructions
- Prep your mini muffin pans(s) by placing liners and dousing with nonstick spray. Note that the recipe makes about 70 mini muffins. Preheat the oven at 350-degrees.
- In a large bowl, mix together the cake mix, eggs, oil, and Baileys Creamer. Once that's mixed to show no clumps, add the chocolate chips. The batter will be a little runny.
- A teaspoon scoop makes it easy to dole out batter into the liners--but don't fill to the top! They will grow as they bake. Top with a few extra chocolate chips, if desired.
- Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, until the tops are springy and the innermost muffins pass the toothpick test. Use a fork to pop them out and onto a rack to cool.
- Store in a sealed container in the fridge or at room temperature.
- OM NOM NOM!
Bready or Not: Chewy Chocolate-Stuffed Cookie Bars
Do you like chocolate chip cookies, the kind that are soft, dense, and cakey? Do you like chocolate? Oh boy. Do I have the recipe for you.
These babies are rich, indulgent, and made to pad thighs. Did I mention they are tasty? Yeah. These are chewy in the best kind of way.
I prefer using milk chocolate chips, but you can tailor these to your taste buds. Go semi-sweet or dark. Mix them all up. Be crazy.
The filling in these bars is rather like a ganache, so it will soften a lot if it’s at room temperature or warmer. I found they kept in the fridge really well in a sealed container.
They keep well in your belly, too.
Modified from Recipe Girl.
Bready or Not: Chewy Chocolate-Stuffed Cookie Bars
Ingredients
CHOCOLATE FILLING:
- 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips or milk chocolate chips
- 14 oz sweetened condensed milk
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
COOKIES:
- 1 cup unsalted butter 2 sticks, room temperature
- 1 cup light brown sugar packed
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 cup oats quick-cooking or old-fashioned rolled
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips or milk chocolate chips
Instructions
For the chocolate filling:
- Place the chocolate chips and condensed milk in a microwave-safe bowl and heat for 40-50 seconds, watching it the whole time--condensed milk can turn to lava if you're not careful! Stir well, and heat again if necessary; the chocolate chips should blend in. Once that happens, add the vanilla extract and stir in. Set aside to cool to room temperature.
For the cookie bars:
- Preheat oven to 350-degrees. Line a 9x13-inch pan with foil, overlapping the sides to make it easy to lift out later. Spray foil with nonstick spray or rub with butter.
- Place the butter and both sugars in a large bowl. Beat until smooth and creamy. Add the eggs and vanilla.
- In a separate bowl, combine the dry ingredients: the flour, oats, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Gradually add to the butter mixture until everything is well incorporated. Stir in the chocolate chips.
- Place about half the cookie dough in dollops in the ready pan. Gently smooth it out to cover the bottom. Pour the cooled chocolate over the dough. Top that with the remaining dough in dollops; don't worry about covering the whole surface.
- Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the top is just golden brown. Cool completely. Use the foil to lift it out of the pan to cut. Store in a sealed container in the fridge, as the middle will soften at room temperature.
- OM NOM NOM!
Bready or Not: Dulce de Leche Brownies
Right before Valentine’s Day, I like to share new brownie or chocolate recipes. Today I’m posting a recipe that was originally at the Holy Taco Church: Dulce de Leche Brownies.
This is a dangerous recipe, and I’m not just talking calories. Sweetened condensed milk becomes lava after mere minutes in the microwave. Make this recipe with care.
I have had this recipe for ages–I clipped it off a box of Challenge Butter. Mind you, I live in Arizona, so I can easily buy ready-made canned Dulce de Leche at any store, but I wanted to go hardcore to make this accessible to cooks around the world.
There is a warning in the original recipe to watch the bowl closely. This is legit. After the 3rd cooking burst in the microwave, I found my bowl had runneth over. Sweetened condensed milk everywhere. HOT, sticky stuff. Stuff that burns. Yeah.
I cleaned up the microwave and the outside of the bowl as best I could, and from then on, I did 50-60 second cooking bursts, and even then I stopped it early a few times.
Was it worth the clean-up and risk of 3rd degree burns? HECK YEAH. Brownies?! Hello!
This makes a 9×13 pan of luscious, fudgy brownies. If you like’em cakey, you’ll have to go elsewhere. Sorry. The dulce de leche isn’t a super-thick layer. You can’t even see it in most of the bars, but you taste it. It’s ninja dulce de leche.
Subtle. Sweet. Potentially harmful to your health while preparing and while eating.
Modified from recipe from Challenge Butter.
Bready or Not: Dulce de Leche Brownies
Ingredients
Dulce de Leche
- 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
- 1 Tablespoon corn syrup
- 2 Tablespoons unsalted butter
Brownies
- 1 cup unsalted butter 2 sticks, softened
- 11/4 cups white sugar
- 1/2 cup brown sugar packed
- 4 eggs room temperature
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon espresso powder optional but awesome
- 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder sifted
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 recipe Dulce de Leche above (or use canned Dulce de Leche)
- 1/2 cup chocolate chips
Instructions
To make Dulce de Leche
- (Note that you can buy canned Dulce de Leche on the Hispanic foods aisle in many grocery stores and skip this step! You can also make it in a crock pot or stove--look up these other methods online. Microwave is faster, but has some danger involved.)
- Combine sweetened condensed milk and corn syrup in a LARGE microwave safe bowl. You need the bowl large because the stuff will start to boil like an erupting volcano.
- Microwave on 50% power, stopping and stirring every 2 minutes. Start watching VERY CAREFULLY about the 5 minute point. It will start to boil over very quickly. Start doing 1 minute increments, stirring well in between. At the 10 to 12 minute point, it will thicken and look caramel-colored rather than white. It might look curdled but that goes away when you stir. Add in the butter and stir until it's melted. Set aside.
To Make the Brownies
- Preheat oven to 325-degrees F. Line a 9x13 pan with foil and butter it or spray it with Pam.
- In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugars until fluffy. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Combine flour, espresso powder (if using), cocoa, and salt. Add dry ingredients into creamed mixture; mix until well blended.
- Spread about 1/2 of mixture in the prepared pan. This will just cover the bottom. Drop spoonfuls of Dulce de Leche evenly over this layer and smooth out. Sprinkle chocolate chips all over. Cover with remaining brownie batter; an offset spatula is great to smooth it to the edges.
- Bake 35 to 40 minutes. Cool and cut into squares.
- OM NOM NOM!
Bready or Not: Honey Blondies
It’s my birthday (Whoo hoo! Thirty-six!) so let’s bake up something that’s likewise blonde and nutty.
These blondies aren’t purely sweet things because they are cut by bittersweet chocolate. The pecans add a crunch that’s a great contrast to the smoothness.
Actually, the word “smooth” is the best way to describe these bars. The batter is very thick and reminds me of caramel candy. It bakes up in a smooth layer. It cuts smoothly, even with the pecans in there. The blondies almost melt in your mouth, too.
Plan ahead to make these because the batter needs to cool in stages because you 1) don’t want to scramble the eggs, and 2) you don’t want the chocolate chips to melt when you stir them in (not like this would be a total disaster, but still).
I’m not sure how long these stay fresh. My husband took them to work and they were GONE in hours. I imagine the bars would freeze well between layers of wax paper, but I haven’t tried that yet.
Oh darn. I guess I should make them again.
Greatly modified from Martha Stewart Living.
Bready or Not: Honey Blondies
Ingredients
- 1 cup unsalted butter 2 sticks
- 2/3 cup honey
- 1 1/2 cups brown sugar packed
- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 eggs room temperature
- 1 1/2 Tablespoons vanilla extract
- 2 teaspoons coarse salt
- 1 cup pecan pieces
- 8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
Instructions
- Melt butter and honey in a large saucepan. Stir in the brown sugar. Remove from heat and set aside to cool for about 20 minutes.
- Since the contents are still likely a bit warm, add some of the flour and stir in to cool things off. Stir in the eggs and vanilla extract followed by the rest of the flour and the salt. Mix until just combined, and let it continue to cool about 30 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 350-degrees. Prepare a 9x13 pan by lining with foil and spraying with Pam or buttering the surface well.
- Mix the pecan pieces and chocolate into the batter, then spread into the pan.
- Bake for about 30 minutes; the edges will just be turning brown. Let the blondies cool completely on a wire rack. Use the foil to lift them out to cut into squares. Store in an airtight container.
- OM NOM NOM!
Bready or Not: Peppermint-Brownie Pie
You could just make normal brownies, sure, but it’s an indisputable fact that everything is better in pie form.
Back in March, we were in Tucson for the Book Festival on Pi Day. To my amazement, pie was hard to find. We ended up driving a good distance to a Village Inn, where they had already run out of most pies. Our selections ended up being fine, but my husband was tormented by a tabletop ad for a mint brownie pie that was not available.
“Don’t worry,” I told him. “I’ll make one for you.”
This ended up being more of a challenge than I expected. I ended up looking at a number of recipes until I found a good base recipe to modify. I wanted a strong mint flavor and for it to not necessarily LOOK Christmassy. I wanted a pie that could be made year-round.
I already had some York Patties stashed away, courtesy of post-holiday clearance sales, so I had the very candy to mix into my recipe, too.
The end result was peppermint-brownie perfection. I used my homemade pie crust (shown below as well) and was pleased that the brownie contents didn’t make the crust get soggy or hard.
If you love mint brownies, if you love pie, welcome to your new bliss.
Modified from Culinary Concoctions by Peabody.
Bready or Not: Basic Pie Crust
Ingredients
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 Tablespoon sugar
- 1 teaspoon fine salt
- 1 cup unsalted butter 2 sticks, cold, cut into cubes
- 3/4 cup ice water
Instructions
- Make dough hours in advance or the night before. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, and salt. Add in the cold butter cubes, and either use a pastry blender or pulse the ingredients in a food processor until the butter is pea-sized.
- Pour in the cold water and pulse/mix together until the dough forms a loose ball. I like to use my hands at this point. The dough may be sticky, but it will firm up well.
- Pour dough onto a floured surface. Divide into two balls and fallen them into discs. Wrap each disc in parchment paper, then in plastic wrap. Refrigerate at least one hour before placing in pie dish, or freeze for up to 3 months.
- Roll out the refrigerated dough into a 12-inch round. Press it into a 9-inch dish, trimming the excess and pinching the edges. Wrap loosely with plastic wrap and freeze at least two hours before using, or keep frozen up to three months.
Bready or Not: Peppermint-Brownie Pie
Ingredients
- 14 oz sweetened condensed milk
- 1/4 cup unsalted butter half stick, cut into pieces for quicker melting
- 1/2 cup unsweetened baking cocoa sifted
- 3 eggs room temperature
- 3 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 2 tsp espresso powder optional but awesome
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp peppermint extract
- 1 cup milk chocolate chips
- 1 cup York Peppermint Patties chopped
- 1 pie shell make your own or use a store bought crust
Instructions
- Set out the pie crust atop a cookie sheet. Chop up the York patties and place half of them in the crust.
- In a medium sauce pan, place the milk, butter, and cocoa powder. Warm on low heat. Stir occasionally so the mixture doesn't stick and scorch. Remove from heat when all ingredients are melted and mixed together fully. Set aside to cool for 15 minutes.
- Preheat the oven at 350-degrees.
- In a large bowl, lightly beat the three eggs. Temper them by adding a couple spoonfuls of the chocolate mixture and mixing. Do this three times. Finally, stir the remaining chocolate into eggs.
- Add the flour, espresso powder, vanilla extract, and peppermint extract. Fold in chocolate chips.
- Pour brownie batter into the pie shell and then top with remaining chopped York Patties.
- Bake for 30-40 minutes on the cookie sheet, until a knife in the center comes out clean. Let set to cool for several hours. Store covered with foil in the fridge.
- OM NOM NOM!
Bready or Not Guest Sherrida Pope with Peanut Butter Nutella Cookies
I’m happy to welcome author Sherrida Pope (who I know better as Nancy Fulda) to Bready or Not today! She has two darling new children’s books out, one for Halloween and one for Thanksgiving. Owls and cats, you can’t go wrong with that. Other things that can’t go wrong: anything combined with Nutella. Sherrida has a recipe for Peanut Butter Nutella Cookies that look absolutely delicious!
The Cat who Ruined Thanksgiving
I still remember the first time I tasted Nutella. It was during December in the 1980’s, surrounded by holiday trappings and a box of intriguing food items my sister had brought back from Germany. What was this strange substance, this… spreadable chocolate?
It was love at first bite. But you couldn’t find Nutella in California stores back then, or at least, we couldn’t, and so my newfound affinity had to wait on the back shelf until my own trip to Germany nearly a decade later. Happily, globalization has since rectified many of the gaps on my store shelves, and I’m pleased to report that I can now find Nutella in nearly every major supermarket in my area.
I hope you can, too, because the only thing better than Nutella is Nutella combined with something superbly delectable. Think about it: Nutella is yummy. Peanut butter is yummy. Both together is… well, around my house it’s a recipe for an empty plate and a lot of cookie crumbs.
Peanut Butter Nutella Cookies
½ cup margarine or butter
½ cup peanut butter
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
½ tsp baking powder
Beat margarine and peanut butter with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add ½ cup of the flour, sugar, egg, and baking powder. Beat until thoroughly combined. Add remaining flour.
Form dough into 1-inch balls. (If dough is too sticky to shape easily, then add extra flour or refrigerate for 15-20 minutes.) If desired, use a spoon to create a small depression in the center of each cookie.
Bake at 375° for 7-9 minutes. Spread Nutella across the top of warm cookies.
Sherrida Pope, who also publishes as Nancy Fulda, lives and writes in the scenic area near Utah Lake. She has three children, a pet hedgehog, and a transient appreciation for classical music. Find her engaging chapter books at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online retailers.
The Cat who Ruined Thanksgiving
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