Heart-Shaped Brownies

Happy Valentine’s Day!

It wouldn’t be a holiday on this blog if I didn’t cut it super close! I’ve been pretty busy and I wasn’t really planning on doing something for Valentine’s Day, but I had a pretty big reason to besides the undying love I have for my wife and her undying love for brownies…

It turns out I did something right in the last year because Wilton asked me to stick around for their Sweet Treat Team!!!

What does that mean?! It means Wilton is awesome and I get to show you why, that’s what it means! If you’re unfamiliar with the Sweet Treat Team, we’re a group of bloggers from all walks of life. Different interests, different areas of expertise, an insane level of creativity and skills (which I contribute about .8% to), and an all around awesome group of peeps. If you want to check us out, here’s our blogs so you can see what we’re all about.

So as you may have guessed, another year with Wilton means more boxes of goodies to go through!

~~This is usually the spot where I put my unboxing video of the mailer they send me, but I seem to have misplaced it.~~ Nevermind, found it! I got the Valentine’s box a few weeks ago but thought I wouldn’t be able to make anything worthwhile. After thinking about it day after day, I figured I could put this to good use.

I’m a sucker for these silicone molds. They’re so versatile! You can do so many things with them it’s always fun to try and think something up.

My wife was wanting me to make something, so I took her inspiration and ran with it. Once I knew I was making something for her, it was almost automatic what popped in my head – brownies. They’d be great and easy to whip up and crank out, so that’s exactly what I did.

Heart-Shaped Brownies (adapted from allrecipes.com)

2 cups – Sugar
1 cup – Butter, melted
1/2 cup – Cocoa Powder
1 teaspoon – Vanilla Extract
4 each – Eggs
1 1/2 cups – Flour
1/2 teaspoon – Baking Powder
1/2 teaspoon – Salt

For Dipping

1 each – Bag of Red Wilton Candy Melts
1 each – Bag of chocolate chips

Optional Valentine’s sprinkles for decoration

Notes:

You’re going to need the Silicone Petite Hearts Mold by Wilton.
It’s a straight forward recipe. No twists, no turns, no frills. Just brownies.
Which means there will be no cayenne pepper in these babies! Haha, remember that?! I’m sure my wife does! They were her FAVORITE!
</sarcasm>
I went more cake-like than typical brownie. Usually you look for chewy and moist. Somewhat undercooked. C’mon, you know what I’m talking about. But if you’re using a silicone mold, you’re asking for trouble by not having something with some structure.
Candy melts! What, you thought I’d do a Wilton post without candy melts?! For shame! I really, truly didn’t want to use them. But I had them, so when in Rome…
As with most brownies, this is not directions on how to build a carbonic fusion warp drive. These are brownies. It doesn’t get much simpler than this.

Speaking of which, let’s do it.

Heat the oven to 350.

Put everything in a bowl except for the butter.

THEN pour in the melted butter and mix till just incorporated.

That’s it. You just made brownie batter. Your award is in the mail.

Give the mold a little spray with non-stick. Take a spoon or whatever it is you like to use and pour the batter into the hearts. You’re looking to fill them halfway, so don’t go crazy.

Put the mold on a sheet tray and pop it in the oven for 13 minutes.

When they’re out, let them cool for about 5 or 6 minutes then carefully push them up from the bottom and extract. And just like that, my chocolate heart is in your hand. Be gentle.

What I do is wash the mold between each use. But that’s just me. If you’re in a rush and you want to just push through, then spray the mold again and keep going. Thanks to that spray there isn’t much to worry about, but if there are chunks of brownie on there then give it a wash.

Repeat the process until the batter is gone. This gave me about 40 something brownie hearts. I don’t even know to be honest, I lost count after 3 batches. I just know there are a crap load of heart-shaped brownies in my kitchen right now and they’re calling my name.

Once all the brownies are out and cooled, it’s time to finish them off.

Oh, what, you thought that was it? Get your gloves on, Charlie, we’re about to get messy. Get a nice piece of parchment paper and lay it down on your work area. On top of that, put a cooling rack.

Put the whole bag of red candy melts in a microwave safe bowl. Microwave for 1 minute at 50% power, then take out and stir, and repeat until they’re melted.

This is where it gets fun! Drop a heart in the melted pool of goodness and get it nice and coated. Get your favorite fork (come on, everyone has a favorite fork) and fish it out. You want to pick it up from the bottom and then tap the fork on the side of the bowl a few times to get the excess off.

Once it looks good, transfer it over to the cooling rack using a second fork, picking it up from the bottom.

Good? We all good? Simple, yes? Good! Thought so.

If you want to use sprinkles, now is the time when the dip is fresh.

Continue on for half the batch. I say half because I switched it up for variety. You can totally keep going if you want. You’ll need to melt some more candy melts, but you can do the whole batch this way if you want.

I decided to melt some chocolate chips and used them for the second batch. I like to melt my chocolate at 50% power for 30 second intervals. Once it’s melted, do the same exact process you did with the red candy melts.

Now, when you’re done you should have a bunch of red hearts and chocolate hearts. What to do now?! Drizzle time!

When you’re done, you’ll probably have some chocolate left over. So what I did was just take a few hearts and drizzled some chocolate on them with a fork (your favorite one again, if you’d like). And because I thought it looked cool, I dipped the bottom of the dry red hearts in the chocolate and let them rest upside down till dry. It gave a nice two-tone look to them. Because I’m a mad man with a box of chocolates, I drizzled some more on top and they came out fantastic.

If you have white chocolate, I’d imagine it’ll look real nice to drizzle some of that on top of either the red or regular chocolate hearts.

It’s all up to you, really. If you want all red, or all chocolate, or maybe all white chocolate with red drizzle, it’s all about you. Whatever floats your boat is fine with me. Don’t forget about flavors too! Wilton has a bunch of candy melts in flavors so give them a look if you’re curious.

And that’s pretty much it. Once everything is decorated you’re ready to go. Put them all on a nice plate and leave them on a table next to a ~~bottle of champagne~~ glass of milk and a vase of roses and you my friend will have to thank me later.

Or if you’re anything like us, they’ll be sitting in the microwave until you finish eating your take-out pizza because that’s how we roll on Valentine’s Day. Don’t be jealous! Fight the good fight. Avoid restaurants and stay in. Rent a movie, order a pizza. Again, thank me later.