Now sometimes it's a good thing. I enjoy cooking. I enjoy creating. I am NOT good at following a recipe. I use recipes as guidelines, suggestions, but not to be followed to a T. When cooking I often throw all caution to the wind, invite guests over for dinner & tweak my "culinary masterpieces" as the first unsuspecting guest arrives. After all, pizza is only a phone call away.
This is where my husband and I differ. While Craig and I were engaged he was cooking a meal for me. This one involved tater tots. To give him credit he has made me quite of few gourmet meals in the past, but not that night. That night it was tater tots. I watched him as he placed each tot on the cookie sheet, all spaced out evenly, lined up in a row. I half expected him to take out a ruler to measure that they were 2 inches apart.. I mean seriously, what was going on here? Was I about to marry a guy like the one from "Sleeping with the Enemy"? Because if Craig was going to be very particular about the placement of his tater tots he was going to be sorely disappointed with the woman he was about to vow before God, family, and friends to love and to cherish, in sickness and in health, in sound mind and the crazies. What, that's not how your vows were written? It turns out Craig was just following the directions on the tater tots package because he's good at following a recipe. He sees them as a way to have a good outcome and a positive dining experience. Ore-Rida then!
Recently a sweet friend had surgery and a couple of us from church signed up to bring her family a meal. That's what you do...medical procedure, we'll bring you a meal, new baby, we'll bring you a meal, you are moving to a new house, we'll bring you a meal, grieving, we'll bring you a meal. It may seem silly to some. It's just food, but when things are stressful, or hard, or extra busy not having to think about how you will feed your family is a blessing. I always tell my girls that we make meals for others because it's something that we know we can do to help someone out. When my daughter Katelyn was born friends brought me meals a couple of times a week for almost 6 weeks. It was so nice to not have to think about dinner while trying to wrangle a new born & a one year old.
Anyway, back to my friend and the meal. My friend Alison and I decided we would do this meal together, because there were only two slots to sign up and more than two people wanted to bring a meal. Alison took care of the main dish, while I told her I would take care of the salad, bread and a dessert. Easy-peasy, I picked up a yummy caesar salad in a bag (no shame here) and doctored up a loaf of pillsbury refrigerated dough french bread to bake mozzarella garlic bread. Now it was time for dessert. Desserts are not my thing. I know some people that make elaborate desserts that are practically works of art. I'm pretty basic. I found a box of brownie mix in our pantry, I checked to make sure it hadn't expired, and thought what can make from this, besides the obvious of course. These brownie would have been delicious made as is. Put a half gallon of ice cream with them and you have a party, but like I said, I can't just leave well enough alone.
In the old days, like 1995, I would have perused a cookbook or cooking magazine. Maybe I would clip something that looked tasty to make for later. Now, what do I do? Pinterest, of course! Pinterest doesn't get me all up in a tizzy like I hear it does some people. It's more like a recipe for me and I just use it as a guideline, suggestions, etc. I pin all kinds of things to my Pinterest board and take the ideas I can reasonably use and use them when I need to. Again, tweaking what I can do and not do as I go along. I found ALL kinds of delicious brownie recipes, but the one with the toasted marshmallows on top caught my eye (and my taste buds). Of course I tweaked it. Instead of a graham cracker crust I went along with crushed pretzels, butter, and a sprinkling of sugar for the crust. I had to watch them like a hawk while I was broiling the marshmallow tops because fires in the kitchen are not my friend.
Oh my sweet goodness. These were the best thing I had ever baked. The salty of the pretzel mixed with the fudgy brownie, and then the gooey, springy marshmallow topping. I'm drooling on my keyboard now as I type. They turned out so good that I baked one for my friend that we were taking a meal to, and another bigger one to share with friends. I carried that 9X13 with me everywhere that evening. We were meeting up at the church for the girls to have pizza with friends, 6 brownies gone. We offered some to police officers, 2 more gone. I met friends for dinner. More gone. I offered one to anyone I knew and some people I didn't. Each person smiled and enjoyed their brownie. It was a small thing, but enjoyed by many.
So, I guess this time it was best that I didn't leave well enough alone.
We are headed to swim lessons in 30 minutes. If I see you there I will offer you the remainder of what is left of my new sweet treat. I call it "Brownies with a twist"
Recipe
Just to be used as a guideline of course
Ingredients:
Brownie mix of your choice
Salted pretzels (for obvious reasons I used twists)
1 stick of butter
1 bag of marshmallows
1/2 Cup Semi-sweet chocolate chip (optional, but really, really good)
1 Tbs sugar
Grease bottom of brownie pan
Crush salted pretzels into itty-bitty pieces
Pour melted stick of butter on pretzels
Sprinkle sugar on pretzels
Mash this mixture with a back of a fork into pan
Prepare brownie mix according to package directions
Pour over pretzel layer
Sprinkle some chocolate chips over batter
Bake according to brownie mix directions
As soon as they are done press marshmallows into warm brownies
Put the pan back in the oven 5-6 inches under broiler
Broil for 1 minute, but watch it closely, rotate pan as the marshmallows brown
Take them out if they start to smoke, this dish is not brownie flambe'.
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