Kahlua Brownies are great for serving at parties because they’re pretty and delicious and in a completely different league than your traditional brownie.  They gained the nickname “Shower Brownies” because our friend who gave us the recipe served them at so many wedding and baby showers.  This recipe makes a half sheet pan worth of brownies, which, cut in 1+ inch squares, yields 88 brownies.  If you serve them, you will get requests for the recipe!

Source:  Jane Hyde gave the recipe to my family, and she found it in Mississippi magazine.  It was Jane’s daughter who dubbed them Shower Brownies.

Difficulty:  Medium (just because it has 3 layers so it’s more time consuming than your regular brownie)

Brownies

1 ½ cups butter

3 cups sugar

6 eggs

6 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled

1 ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

1 ½ cups flour

¾ teaspoon salt

Cream butter and sugar.  Add melted chocolate.

Add eggs, one at a time.

Add vanilla.  Stir salt and flour together and then add to mixture.  Pour into greased 12×17 jelly roll pan (“half sheet pan”).

 

Bake about 20 minutes at 350, or until just done. Remove from oven and sprinkle with a little Kahlua.  Don’t you hate it when recipes are vague?  I use a half tablespoon or a little more.  The variation in color of the chocolate in the picture below shows streaks and drops of Kahlua.

Icing

6 tablespoons butter

4 ½ cups powdered sugar

6 tablespoons milk

1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract

1 ½ teaspoons Kahlua

Beat until smooth.  Spread over cooled brownies.

Refrigerate or leave on the counter for awhile to let the icing set.

Glaze

2 ounces semi-sweet chocolate

2 tablespoons butter

Melt over low heat.

 

Once it has cooled a little, place in plastic bag.

Snip tiny bit off corner of bag and drizzle over frosted brownies in a criss cross pattern.  I like it to look a little messy, which is convenient since it’s difficult to be perfectly precise with the plastic bag method of drizzling.

If you want the lines to go straight all the way to the end of the pan, place the pan on a counter you can sprinkle with chocolate (or wax paper like I did in the picture), then drizzle past the edges of the pan so that your turnaround spot is on the counter, not the brownies.  Drizzle with a fast sweeping motion.  You can freeze these for a few weeks as long as they’re in an airtight container.  I use the plastic lids for my pans and then wrap tightly in foil.  Cut in 1 inch squares and serve room temperature or a little cool.

Variation

One day I’m going to experiment with replacing the Kahlua with peppermint extract and tinting the frosting green or pink to show that it’s mint.  However, every time I start to make them, I think… but they’re SO tasty with Kahlua, why mess with a great thing?  So I haven’t done it yet, but I will, and then I’ll blog about it.

The Story:  The trees are covered with ice, and the temperature is dropping dropping dropping, so i’m cooking cooking cooking today.  I’m making these for a Christmas party next weekend.  I’m freezing them tightly wrapped in foil until the day of the party to keep them as fresh as possible.