Pudding Topped Brownies With Berries

Well friends, as is quite often the case in my kitchen, not everything went according to plan today when I attempted to make a dessert to bring to recipe club tonight.

But that’s ok! I think the end result turned out just fine

I had every intention of making this Strawberry Brownie Torte that Danielle @ Runs With Spatulas whipped up as a guest post for Lindsey @ Gingerbread Bagels. When I read the post a few weeks ago, I pretty much knew immediately that I was going to make it at some point. I was looking for an easy dessert today so it seemed like a good time to try it out.

Before we start, please click the link to the original recipe so you have an idea of what I was trying to accomplish….

I bought some boxed brownie mix at the store. I wasn’t feeling quite up to making my own today. At the last minute, I grabbed a bag of peanut butter chips because they were on sale. I thought added them to the brownie batter would be a nice touch.

I followed Danielle’s directions and split the batter between two cake pans and popped them in the oven.

I took them out of the oven and let them cool a little bit. Then I ran into my first problem. I couldn’t get the brownie cakes out of the pans! I prodded and tapped to no avail. Instead of panicking, I decided I would just make individual servings to start with. Then I wouldn’t have to deal with cutting it later. So I cut off the edges of the circles, cut the middle into nine squares and popped them out of the pan. I did grease the pan and once I had an edge piece out, the rest came out just fine so I’m not really sure what the problem was….

I wasn’t all that upset because the edges are my favorite part and this way I got them all to myself! Next I whipped up the pudding. Danielle’s version used sweetened condensed milk and coolwhip. I forgot to buy coolwhip and even though I bought sweetened condensed milk, I made a spur of the moment decision to just make it according to the package directions with cold Skim milk. After I put the pudding in the fridge, I sliced the strawberries. Ten minutes later, I was ready to go.

I also decided that two layers of brownies might be a bit much for me, so I opted for a single layer. I spooned about 1 Tbsp of pudding onto each brownie and spread it around. Then I topped each square with four pieces of strawberry. This is where I ran into problem #2. Since I didn’t have the surface area of a cake to work with, the strawberry slices were too big for my squares. I had to cut a little bit off the top of each of my slices to make them fit!

I had lots of extra pudding, so I stirred the extra strawberry bits into it and stuck it in the fridge for a snack later

The brownies still looked like they were missing something so I started thinking. I remembered these Reeses Fudge Cookie Sandwiches that Amy made, my second choice for today, and decided to melt some chocolate chips and pipe the chocolate over the brownies for little extra pizzazz

Pudding Topped Peanut Butter Brownies

1 box brownie mix
1 cup peanut butter chips
1 box instant vanilla pudding
strawberries, thinly sliced
1/4 c chocolate chips

Directions:
1. Prepare brownies according to package directions, with the addition of the peanut butter chips, in a 9×13 pan.
2. Let cool and cut into squares.
3. Prepare pudding according to package directions.
4. Thinly slice strawberries.
5. Top each brownie with 1-2 Tbsp pudding.
6. Arrange strawberries in desired pattern on top.
7. Melt chocolate chips and spoon into a ziploc bag.
8 . Cut the tip off the ziploc bag and pipe chocolate over brownie squares.
9. Store in fridge until ready to serve!