The Unsinkable Molly Brown(ie)

…No, not that kind of Molly, sorry folks (although come July, who knows? 😉 ) .

Alright, I know I’ve been absent for a while, and trust me when I say that it tore me up inside to take an entire month off from blogging, but life circumstances beyond my control made it impossible for me to even do a bare minimum half-assed job here, and I was definitely in no mood to be lighthearted and fancy-free (and isn’t that the real reason you come here? …and for those of you who mistakenly read that as “pantsy-free”, that was not in fact your license to walk around in your underwear….or in your Donald Duck costume if you know what I’m sayin’ 😉 :

My favourite image that I found while searching the image above though was this one:

…’cause seriously? NOW you’re concerned with the X-rated nature of your lower extremities? You really thought that your dashing bow tie and half sailor ensemble was enough of a distraction that no one was previously noticing your perpetual state of pantlessness? Oh Donald, if it didn’t work for Alexander Skarsgård, what hope do you have? (I don’t know how I stumble upon these bits of nonsense either) .

Anywho, after almost 3.5 years of never missing a week, it did feel a bit like a failure on my part skipping all those weeks 🙁 . However, it was getting harder and harder to keep up when I had so many other things going on and this was starting to feel like a super stressful chore instead of the fun that it’s supposed to be, and that’s just not fair to me or to you my invisible, non-existent readership. Of course I was still baking though, so now I get to trot out all the fun things I was concocting in my absence! 🙂

Like these brownies for instance. Oh sure, they look all regular and innocent, but these little paragons of nom-nom-nom-ness are in fact maybe even more delectably fudgy than your typical fudge-style brownie by the fantabulous addition of some miniature/ bite-sized cookie dough bites! (can’t you just see the epic fudgyness of these?)

I looked at the “been there done that” popularity that was the Brookie (well, I suppose it’s still called that, and that definitely has a much better ring to it then the lesser known “Cooknie”. Hmmm…maybe I should just rename these the “Cooknie”? No, you’re right, terrible idea *Amber smacks self in forehead with unnecessary force*. Terrible name shaken out of brain completely? Check 😉 ), and wanted to put my own little spin on it, and these are what I came up with. I simply quartered the recipe for one of my more favoured chocolate chunk cookies, opting to toast the flour to add an extra element of nuttiness to the cookie dough, rolled the dough into super tiny bite-sized balls of goodness, chilled them in the freezer while mixing up my brownie batter, stirred a whole whack of them in and voilà, the CookDoughNie was born! (Please Amber, just…just stop. I didn’t think anything could be worse than Cooknie, but once again, you’ve managed to find the trap door when everyone else thought we had already hit rock bottom).

The only downside to these was that, despite me thinking quartering a recipe would make the perfect amount of required cookie dough bite mix-ins, it actually still made way, way too much (as in, I put a half cup of them in these brownies, and had 2 cups left over. It would be sacrilegious to throw them out, so keep your eyes peeled (*shudder* I hate that expression so much. For some reason, every time I hear it or say it, my brain instantly pictures someone using a potato peeler on someone’s eyeball. Sorry (not sorry), now I’ve ruined your life too 😉 ) for a future post that will also incorporate these. Although absolutely nothing wrong with just eating the leftovers straight-up as well of course!

So crack out the mixing bowls, and you’ll be rollin’ in (cookie) dough(nie 😉 ) in no time!