Chocolate Explosion Brownies

I might have crossed the too much chocolate line with this brownie. I actually started out wanting to play around with my peanut butter ball filling recipe and it kind of snowballed as so many of my projects tend to do. ;)

I adore the baby peanut butter balls/shapes. They will definitely be showing up on some other things I do believe.


Chocolate Explosion Brownies:

Brownie layer:
1/2 cup tub margarine
1 square (1 oz) unsweetened chocolate
1/4 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
1 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 cups flour
1 tsp vanilla

Melt margarine and chocolate together in the microwave. Stir often and be careful not to overheat. Add in sugar and vanilla Beat the eggs lightly in a small bowl before adding them to the chocolate mixture. Stir in flour. Pour batter into a greased 8x8 pan and bake at 350 for 15 to 18 minutes. Allow brownie to cool and then chill. Slice the brownie in half, creating two layers. Set the bottom later on a serving plate with sides.

Fudge layer:
14 oz non fat sweetened condensed milk
12 oz milk chocolate chips
1 tsp vanilla

Mix everything together in a bowl. Heat on high in the microwave for one minute, stirring at 30 seconds. (Heat longer if your chocolate still needs to melt.) Take one cup of the fudge (roughly about half) and spread on top of the bottom brownie layer. Take the second brownie layer and put it down on top of the fudge.

Fudge sauce layer:
With the remaining fudge mixture.....add 3 tbls or so of milk and blend. Blend in 2 cups of powdered sugar. Pour/spread mixture over top of the brownie making sure to cover the sides. You will have a a bit of extra sauce. Chill. When fudge sauce sets up clean up the serving plate a bit as you will have an overflow of sauce at the bottom sides of the brownie. Chilling makes it easy to scrape the extra away.

Peanut butter layer:
1 cup creamy natural peanut butter
1/3 cup tub margarine
2 cups powdered sugar

Melt the peanut butter and the margarine in the microwave. Stir often to prevent overheating. Stir in the powdered sugar. Take about half the peanut butter mixture (or more depending on how thick you actually want this layer) and roll it out into a 1/4 inch sheet wide enough to cover the brownie. I used wax paper to transfer this layer onto the top of the brownie. Nip off any excess around the bottom edges and tuck the layer in snug to the brownie. Pinch any cracks together.

Use the remaining peanut butter mixture (and you will probably have some leftover) to make garnish shapes....balls, tubes, ect.

Milk Chocolate Topping:
Melt 12 oz milk chocolate chips with 2 tbls shortening in the microwave. Stir often. The chocolate should flow nicely and coat the back of a spoon with a thin layer of chocolate when it's the right texture. You can add more shortening as needed to thin further. Spread chocolate across the top of the peanut butter layer making sure to cover the sides.

Use the remaining thinned chocolate to dip your garnish pieces in. Set them on a piece of waxed paper to set up. Drizzle chocolate over the top of the garnish pieces with a fork.

Chill everything in the fridge to set up. Arrange the garnish pieces across the top of the brownie. You can use a small dollop of melted chocolate to secure your garnish pieces on the top if you don't want to chance them moving around. Chill until ready to serve.



A few pics of the process...
I hated to cut into this pretty brownie but it had to be done.....sob. A nice view of the different layers though. From the bottom up....brownie, fudge, brownie, fudge sauce, peanut butter, milk chocolate, and garnished with chocolate covered peanut butter.

I rolled out my peanut butter ball filling to see how it held up. It will roll out fine but will crack the second you bend it. ;) Very amusing experimentation though. Cracking really didn't matter since it was covered in milk chocolate in the end.