Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Brownies

This recipe truly combines the best of both worlds - once I read about Cookie Dough Brownies on Beantown Baker, I knew I had to try the recipe. It combines the ooey-gooeyness of raw cookie dough with the chocolate goodness of brownies. Plus, it was unique enough that I knew people would be excited to try it. Motivated by the desire to make something special for two coworkers, one recovering from cataract surgery and the other celebrating a birthday, I was sufficiently motivated to give it a try!

The original recipe used a brownie recipe from King Arthur Flour, which looked good, but I decided to go with my default brownie recipe since it has a nice dense texture that I knew would work well with the fluffier cookie dough frosting. However, inspired by Beantown's Baker lesson on what creates a shiny crust on top of brownies (dissolving as much of the sugar as possible), I switched things up a little bit by adding the white sugar to the butter and chocolate mixture on the stove top.

Presto! A shiny crust - although it would get covered up by the cookie dough topping, at least you and I know it looked good to begin with:


I let the brownie pan cool for an hour on my stove top before moving it to the fridge for another hour of cooling.

Next came the cookie dough topping.

Ingredients
3 sticks (yikes!) butter, softened
1 1/2 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup white sugar
9 tbsp milk
3 cups flour
3 cups mini chocolate chips (I went with regular chocolate chips, since I have gigantic bag of them from BJ's)

Directions

1. Cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Beat in milk.
2. With mixer on low, add flour and mix until well combined. Stir in chocolate chips.

Easy, right? Next came the critical step of combining the two elements to create one magical dessert. And it wasn't that hard. I carefully applied the cookie dough mixture on top of the brownies with a spatula:

In fact, I ended up with around two extra cups of the cookie dough left over, since I figured I had already applied enough. I promptly froze that extra dough with the intention of using it with a future batch of brownies:


Chill the brownies to give the cookie dough some time to firm up. I refrigerated them overnight.

Sliced, these beauties were a work of art. To quote our real estate agent - whom I had saved a few for - the brownies were "obscenely decadent" and claimed that she could "feel the ounces of fat getting ready to rumble." I think that means she liked them.

I think you'd like them too - I highly recommend the recipe! And as I told everyone that tried them, you don't even have to worry about eating raw egg, as the topping replicates the texture and taste of cookie dough (with a slightly fluffier texture) without the fear of salmonella.