brownies - The Idea Room

Mississippi Mud Brownies

I recently needed a little chocolate pick me up. And I was craving brownies. Who doesn’t crave a brownie every now again? But I wanted something a little more fancy than a regular brownie. So I decided to make some Mississippi Mud Brownies.

All you need is your favorite brownie recipe and some Oreo Cookies to crush.

Best Brownie Recipe

Ingredients:

1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup mini marshmallows

Oreo Cookie Crust (crush about 30-40 Oreos after removing frosting center)

1/8 cup melted butter

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9×9 inch baking pan.
Pull out 1/8 cup of crushed Oreos and set aside. Spread the rest of the Oreo Cookie crust into the bottom of the pan with the melted butter and press firmly. Bake in the oven for 8-10 minutes on 350 degrees.
In a medium bowl, mix together the oil, sugar, and vanilla. Beat in eggs. Combine flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt; gradually stir into the egg mixture until well blended. Fold in the marshmallows. Set aside.
Remove from oven and layer on the brownie mix. Sprinkle the rest of the crushed Oreos on the top of the brownie mix in clumps.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the brownie begins to pull away from edges of pan. Let cool on a wire rack before cutting into squares.

Enjoy with a friend and a your favorite glass of ice cold milk!

Hamburger Cupcakes

My son just recently celebrated his 11th birthday. He wanted something fun and different than the traditional cupcake. I had remembered seeing some Hamburger Cookies from Disney’s Family.com a while back as part of their April Fool’s Food Series and Bakerella made some fun hamburger cupcakes here. Since my son is a huge hamburger fan, I thought it would be fun to make him some Hamburger Cupcakes too. This is an idea that has been out there for a while, but was new and fun for us.

They were really easy. I simply made up some yellow cupcakes and baked them normally and then let them cool completely. Then I whipped up a batch of our favorite brownies and poured them into a a greased muffin pan so that the cups were only 1/4 full. These are going to be the hamburger patties so you don’t want them to be very thick.

Cut the tops of the cupcakes off. You will use the two pieces of the cupcake as the top and bottom hamburger buns. You may want to cut the bottom of the cupcake down a bit if your cupcakes are too tall so that it looks more realistic.

Then I took some coconut and placed it into a Ziploc baggie to make some lettuce. I added a few drops of green food coloring and shook the coconut up so that it was evenly colored with the coloring.

Then simply take some of your favorite frosting and dye some of it red and yellow to represent mustard and ketchup. Add a few globs of each to the top and bottom buns. Sprinkle with your lettuce over the top of the brownie. This makes for a pretty quick and easy birthday dessert, and a happy birthday boy. He LOVED them and said they tasted ALMOST as good as his favorite hamburger!