By Avery Maslowsky, Sports Editor
Christmas is Sunday, which means the next three days are about to be full of celebrations, secret santas, holiday parties and food galore! But don’t freight if you have not started making or even planning a treat for one of these occasions, because I’ve got you covered. I’ve put together two of the easiest and two of my personal favorite holiday desserts!
I find that brownies take the least amount of effort and can be prepared in a jiff for any celebration, therefore the two recipes I chose have a simple brownie base to get things started.
REINDEER BROWNIES:
Ingredients:
-Brownie mix
-Mini Nilla Wafers
-M &Ms (preferably Christmas colored)
-Mini marshmallows (cut in half)
-mini chocolate chips
-chocolate frosting
Instructions:
-Preheat your oven to the time according to your selected brownie mix and prepare and bake the mix according to the same directions.
-Take the brownies out of the oven and let them sit until completely cool, the longer you let the brownies sit, the better.
-After the brownies are completely cool, gently glide a spatula between the pan and the brownie to separate the two. When you can glide a spatula completely around the pan with ease, gently flip the pan upside down and lightly tap on the bottom of the pan until the brownie slides out.
-Cut the brownie into two rows. Then, completing one row at a time, cut the brownie row into equilateral triangles, probably yielding about 5 or 6 depending on how big you want to reindeer faces to be. See the following pictures to get an idea at the shape if necessary.
-After cutting the triangles, using a piping bag with a small tip, pipe a circle of chocolate frosting onto the center back of each vanilla wafer and stick it onto the bottom tip of each triangle, to act as a snout for the reindeer.
-Using the same bag and tip, pipe a circle of frosting onto the back of a red M &M and stick that in the center vanilla wafer.
-Next, cut a mini marshmallow in half and stick both onto the triangle, higher than the nose, to act as eyes for the reindeer.
-Finally, pipe chocolate frosting onto the back of a mini chocolate chip to act as the pupils for the reindeer and stick them onto the center of the marshmallows.
-Repeat and enjoy!
CHRISTMAS TREE BROWNIES:
Ingredients:
-brownie mix
-White chocolate chips
-M &M’s
Instructions:
-Preheat your oven to the time according to your selected brownie mix and prepare and bake the mix according to the same directions.
-Take the brownies out of the oven and let them sit until completely cool, the longer you let the brownies sit, the better.
-After the brownies are completely cool, gently glide a spatula between the pan and the brownie to separate the two. When you can glide a spatula completely around the pan with ease, gently flip the pan upside down and lightly tap on the bottom of the pan until the brownie slides out.
-Cut the brownies into eight rectangles, or less if you used an 9×9 or smaller pan.
-Take a rectangular brownie and cut the top right and left off creating a short point, or in this case the first layer of pine for the tree. See the pictures following for further instruction.
-Then, cut on both the left and right side in the middle of the brownie a smaller triangle, to act as the divider the top layer of the tree and the middle and repeat this towards the bottom to act as a divider between the middle and bottom layers of the tree.
-Melt ½ cup of white chocolate chips using either the double-bowl-boiling method or in the microwave until smooth. Fill a piping bag with a fine tip with the white chocolate and begin piping quickly.
-When piping, you can get very original. I stuck with a more traditional garland route, but you could just as well pipe small ornaments or vertical lines, whatever!
-Optional: Immediately after piping the white chocolate, you can stick M &M’s into the chocolate to act as ornaments or lights.
-Let rest until hardened and enjoy!
Avery Maslowsky can be reached at [email protected].
