Ho Ho Ho. It’s Christmas Eve.
Few days feel as special as the eve of a holiday or celebration. I have mentioned before that I am lover of eves of big and small occasions alike. This one in particular deserves extra recognition as it’s not only a holiday but also a deeply spiritual day for me and my family. Our hearts are filled with excitement, gratitude and wonder as we ponder the events of this night so many years ago in our hearts. We celebrate the birthday of Jesus with a special cake every year, singing “Happy Birthday” and blowing out candles. Grandma will prepare her chocolate cake with white frosting while I wanted to go a different route this year. Brownies and chocolate started to swirl in my head and before I knew it, I had whipped up a batter of ooey gooey red velvet brownies and prepared the most outrageous chocolate frosting in history. No really. It’s epic!
This is my Christmas gift to you. I can’t think of a more festive-looking treat to serve on Christmas! If you love chocolate, you should make these. If you really, really, really love chocolate, these are a must. And if you outright adore chocolate, I know you’ll be making these. See? You and me. Practically BFF’s.
These brownies look just as beautiful as the boxed kind. The taste? Soo much more indulgent, rich and simply better. I am confident you’ll love these. Only the luscious frosting could possibly make these even more amazing.
Oh my! I am drooling just by looking at this picture. I was preparing these brownies and frosting while I was skyping with my family. When they saw this frosting in the bowl, I was met with countless oohs and aahs. They practically made me promise that I’ll make them next time we see each other since we sadly won’t be able to get together with my side of the family this year. I so wished I could have delivered these goodies to my loved ones. I am also sad I can’t make a quick trip to your house, but at least you can get the recipe here and make them for those you love most!
Don’t you just swoon at the sight of red velvet desserts? These brownies really couldn’t be more fitting after tonight’s meal or as a special treat on Christmas Day.
Nothing could be easier than making a batch of brownies – even if they’re homemade. Waiting for these to bake in the oven will take a lot longer than it takes to actually make them. The way it should be. Your family deserves to spend time with you instead of trying to find you in the kitchen. You can still feel good because you know that your family will get to enjoy a homemade dessert on Christmas, but without the fuss. They will never know how easy these really are and crown you a SUPERHERO, which you already are!
You know you want to make ’em, go do it! One last thing, if you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time, you probably know that I’m a dark chocolate kind of a girl. If that’s not your cup of tea, feel free to swap bittersweet chocolate for milk chocolate and use regular cocoa powder instead.
I hope you have a lovely Christmas Eve! I’ll unplug so I can spend most of the day with the love of my life before leaving to spend the next couple of days with his family! Can’t wait to see what he thinks about his presents that Santa dropped off a day early :).
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, diced into 6 pieces
- 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
- 1 1/2 tablespoons liquid red food coloring
- 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
- 2 large eggs
- 8 oz bittersweet chocolate or milk chocolate chips
- 2 1/2 sticks butter, softened
- 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (Hershey’s Special Dark Cocoa)
- pinch of salt
- 3/4 cup light corn syrup
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease an 8 x 8 inch baking pan and set aside.
- 1. In a mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
- 2. In a microwave safe bowl, add chopped chocolate and butter and heat until butter and chocolate are completely melted. Stir to thoroughly combine the two. Now add sugar to the mixture and incorporate, using a rubber spatula. Finally add red food coloring, vanilla extract and apple cider vinegar; stir to combine before adding the two eggs. Give it a final stir just until eggs are mixed in. Add flour mixture and stir until just combined. Pour brownie batter into prepared baking pan and bake for 35-40 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool completely. Meanwhile, prepare the frosting.
- 3. Melt chocolate chips and set aside. In the bowl of your stand mixer combine butter, cocoa powder and salt. Mix until smooth, about 1 minute. Add corn syrup and vanilla and stir until incorporated, another minute. Add chocolate and keep stirring until fully incorporated and smooth. Frost brownies and enjoy!
- Brownies will keep up to 3 days in an airtight container.
this looks insane. i love your pictures. a great twist on the white chocolate.
Thank you so much! This was pretty darn delicious 🙂
wow i love the colors. so vibrant!
It really is beautiful to look at and tastes amazing. Thank you, Dina!
The frosting was delicious (but as you can tell from the recipe, makes way, way more than necessary) and pretty easy. Our brownies didn’t cook very evenly but that is probably the fault of our oven more than anything. The recipe tastes great, though I think the amount of expensive ingredients in this isn’t really worth it.
I absolutely love your recipe, i made so many times, can’t help myself to keep making them, gorgeous chocolate frosting with beautiful texture of red velvet brownies, 2 thumps up!!!
I love it! Thanks for your sweet comment. With Valentine’s Day coming up, you have the perfect excuse to make them yet again 🙂
Has anyone tried these with a buttercream or cream cheese style frosting more like a traditional red velvet cake would have? My mother always made RV cakes for my christmas and she used a buttercream frosting but I also enjoy the cream cheese frostings on a lot of the store bought RV cakes and cookies. Might also be good with white chocolate chips mixed into the brownie batter.
I love all of your ideas, Mike. I am sure any frosting you like would go well on top of these – they are meant to be shared and loved just the way you like them. Thanks for stopping by and commenting!
Just wanted to be sure on the recipe directions. It did not say to add the flour mixture to the wet mixture and combine. Went to the website you adapted it from and got the cooking directions there. I know it may be silly and some people may assume, but not everyone is a great baker you might want to update the directions. Thanks for posting this, I am making this as we speak if you couldn’t tell! 🙂
Thank you so much for pointing that out, Nicole. I updated the recipe. Hope you enjoyed these brownies!
If I were to use cocoa powder instead of actual chocolate for the brownies, how much should I use? Can’t wait to try this recipe!
You usually substitute 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder per 1 oz. of chocolate. Using real chocolate is recommended in this recipe as it helps with the texture. I am curious to hear how they turn out!
Thanks for sharing this… I made these on Tuesday and turned out very good, well not quite fluffy, but I believe that had to do with using a larger pan size, because had to stretch to feed 13 ppl, lol. Other than that it was perfect..
I did use Mostly Hershey Cocoa Powder, unfortunately I’m more of an ” to the eye, measure” therefore can not share exact measurements (sorry). But for those adventurous like me give it a try ( I only used the 2oz bittersweet in the begining to melt with butter, as I melted in a sm pot over stove top)
It did turn out amazing, waiting to buy more cocoa power to make a double batch..
Oh, and btw yes frosting is more than needed, but since when is there ever such thing as too much chocolate. , lol
Thx again
This looks amazing but how much is a stick of butter? Butter doesn’t come in sticks in Denmark 🙂
Hi! Looks soooo delicious! But, what kind of food color are you using? When you get them to be so bright red? I never end up getting my velvet cakes to be this bright red.
The only thing that makes a difference (as far as I know) is between gel and liquid food coloring. The gel kind has never worked very well when achieving that signature red velvet color. The drops are they way to go! Hope that helps!
Tried and turned out lovely. You can check my website above. I did it without topping and taste good just as is. Thank-you.
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