Easy Peppermint Brownies Recipe {with box mix} | The Food Cafe (2024)

FAQs

What to add to box brownies to make them better? ›

Add a teaspoon of instant coffee or espresso powder. Throw in a handful of nuts—pecans, walnuts, macadamia, whatever you have on hand. Scoop in a palmful of dried or frozen fruit. Add an extra splash of the top-shelf vanilla extract, or a dab of vanilla paste, or a dash of vanilla powder, to the batter.

Add nuts – Add a handful of finely chopped pecans or walnuts if you love brownies with nuts. Add mix ins – Jazz up a basic brownie mix with chopped mini peanut butter cups, white chocolate chunks, or your favorite chopped up candy bar. Add a swirl – Swirl in spoonfuls of peanut butter or Nutella before baking.

One change is to use milk or heavy cream instead of water. This change will make brownies more moist and gooey since milk is more fatty and flavorful than water. A second change is to use butter instead of oil. For similar reasons to using milk, butter adds a rich and more decadent quality to the batter.

First off, there are many sizes of boxes. From a few ounces to 2 pounds or more. And second, you can cut your brownies to any size you want. So, I would say 8 to 100 pieces.

Swirl in Some Good Stuff

Dollop cream cheese, fruit jam, pumpkin puree, peanut butter or caramel over brownie batter. Spoon it into the pan, then cut through the batter to create this wow-worthy effect. Your dessert will be prettier and tastier than every other treat on the table.

If you opt to add more eggs, say double the amount, something interesting happens. Even though you are adding more moisture, the air bubbles that you catch in the extra eggs add volume, which decreases the density of your final product. This makes your brownies rise and gives them a much more cake-like texture.

Swap Fats. For a subtle upgrade, swap out the called-for vegetable oil with an equivalent amount of melted butter or coconut oil. The results are so incredibly rich and fudgy, they'll fool even the most die-hard of brownie snobs into thinking these are scratch-made.

It couldn't be easier to substitute butter for oil using a 1:1 ratio. This should work with olive, canola, vegetable, and coconut oils. Simply melt and cool the butter to room temperature, then continue with your recipe. (If the recipe calls for ½ cup oil, use ½ cup melted and cooled butter.)

You can absolutely substitute butter for the vegetable oil. Use the same quantity specified in the directions (for example, if it calls for 1/3 cup of oil, use 5 1/3 tablespoons of butter). Melt it down, then let it cool a bit. You might not ever go back to oil!

Peanut butter, marshmallow fluff, Nutella, caramel sauce, or white or dark chocolate fudge all make great additions when swirled into the batter. To swirl you'll make your brownies as usual then pour them into your baking dish then add dollops of the sauce you want to swirl in.

What to use instead of oil in brownie mix? ›

If you love Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, peanut butter might just be the best vegetable oil substitute for you. For a lighter brownie, just about half as much peanut butter. For a chewy fudgy brownie, use just as much peanut butter as the recipe calls for vegetable oil.

Yes, you can use olive oil in brownies!

Olive oil has been gaining popularity in recent years as a substitute for butter and other vegetable oils in baked goods. Not only is it delicious but a healthy alternative cooking fat that can be used in most traditional baking recipes.

A clever hybrid between cake and cookie, brownies are a dense, chocolaty bar cookie baked in a rectangular pan; they can be fudge-like, cake-like, or anything in between. It was about three times more expensive to make the brownies from scratch than to use a mix, owing mostly to the cost of chocolate and walnuts.

Give your brownies some more substance by adding walnuts, peanuts, macadamia nuts, hazelnuts, or any other nut you have in the pantry. Mix the chopped, toasted nuts into the batter for added crunch, then sprinkle some on top for a nice presentation. Along with the nuts, you can add dried fruit to the mix.

Is it okay to make brownies without eggs? Without eggs, baked goods will become a little thinner and not rise as much in the oven. As long as you replace the moisture from the egg with milk, banana or applesauce, you can make brownies without eggs. And yes, this recipe makes thinner brownies than normal.

Add an extra egg to your brownie batter to make more cake-like brownies. There are directions on the back of the box. You can also make brownies from a cake mix with our Loaded Chocolate Cake Mix Brownies recipe.