Red Velvet Brownies - Sweets for a Saturday #14

Red Velvet Brownies - made April 23, 2011 from That Skinny Chick Can Bake blog

Sweets for a Saturday, hosted by Lisa, is becoming one of my favorite ways to get inspired to bake new creations and find other like-minded baking blogs.  There's always an impressive array of desserts linked up, from the homey creations to the mind-boggling professionally decorated masterpieces.  Not that I don't have enough recipes and cookbooks of my own to bake from and I'm still making my way through my baking challenge but it's always good to draw inspiration from others.  Unless I change their actual recipe, I like to link back to the original blogger's post rather than re-posting the recipe on my blog.  That way, anyone who wants to try to make it themselves can find the recipe there and also see their blog.  I believe in giving credit where credit is due.  Just like I hope anyone who uses one of the recipes I post on my blog would link back to mine.  Seems like good blogging etiquette.

This recipe caught my eye amongst the dozens posted on Lisa's link party.  I've made red velvet cakes, cupcakes and cookies but not brownies.  And brownies are my specialty so I decided to address that omission.  I didn't have any white chocolate on hand and I was out of red food coloring so I hiked 3 miles to Target to get what I needed and 3 miles back - calorie burn in advance prep for that taste test piece, of course.  There's a grocery store less than 5 minutes' walk from me that I could've gone to instead but that would defeat my mantra of exercising first then indulging in empty and enjoyable calories.  It's all about the balance.

This brownie was very easy to put together.  I baked mine for exactly 30 minutes.  That was when the toothpick came out clean when poked into the corner but had moist crumbs when tested in the middle.  Perfect.  I didn't start putting together the frosting until the brownie had cooled somewhat as I know I would've been tempted to frost it while it was still warm.  When you make the frosting, careful with melting the white chocolate.  White chocolate melts at a lower temperature than milk or dark chocolate so it won't take long to melt.  Once melted, let it cool before adding to the butter/sugar mixture so you don't risk melting the butter and changing the structure or texture of the frosting.

Clean off the knife after each cut

I love these brownies. I don't normally like a lot of frosting and I'm not big on white chocolate but this brownie and frosting combination was the bomb.  The brownies were moist and fudgy and the white chocolate frosting was a perfect complement.  I couldn't taste the white chocolate that much against the powdered sugar but it was perfect as both a visual and flavor pairing to the red velvet brownie.

One challenge is cutting these cleanly so that the red velvet brownie crumbs don't go everywhere and "contaminate" the pristine white chocolate frosting.  You need to completely wipe off your knife after every slice or else your next cut will get red crumbs on the frosting.  It won't affect the taste but it's just prettier without it.  Although I did that, I still got some stray crumbs in the frosting and that was because when I cut down, some crumbs still adhered when I brought the knife up.  You can see Lizzy's brownies are much more pristine than mine.  Regardless, these were excellent in taste and texture - two thumbs up.  This goes on my list for what to serve at my next dessert party.  Thanks, Lizzy!