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Oh mini chocolate brownie cupcakes, I expected more from you. Our Sunday baking challenge today was in honor of the First Day of School, as these mini brownies were described as being kid friendly, portable, great for back-to-school events, and a sweet-yet-small after-school treat. These mini-brownies are certainly all of those things, but they aren't the brownie for me. I was hoping they'd be more like a scaled-down version of the Baked brownie or at least more like those two-bite brownies that used to be all the rage. I wanted deep, intense, fudgy brownie, but instead these mini chocolate brownie cupcakes are light and airy bites of chocolate more akin to a cake-like brownie, which makes sense given the batter but was still a bummer in my opinion. I'm sure plenty of people would enjoy them, and they certainly aren't bad, but they aren't the kind of brownie I would waste my dessert portion on.
The mini chocolate brownie cupcakes from Baked Occasions are reasonably simple to make and they make a lot of mini-brownies in one batch. First you whisk together very hot water, hot cocoa, and instant espresso powder together. Next you stir together your flour and Kosher salt. Then it's time to cream together the vegetable oil, egg, egg yolk, vanilla, granulated sugar, and light brown sugar. The flour and cocoa mixture are added in three parts, starting and ending with the flour. Finally, a teaspoon of baking soda is whisked into more hot water, and this is added to the batter to create a glossy liquid batter that will rise as high as the top of your muffin tin in the oven. Mini muffin tins are filled with just a tiny tablespoon worth of batter and another tablespoon worth of chocolate chunks, then the muffins are baked about 19 minutes.
Note: I can't stand nuts in brownies, so I skipped the actual first step of toasting walnuts and coating them in butter, then mixing with dark chocolate chunks. Instead, I opted to play with a variety of mix-ins, using chocolate chunks, white chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, health bar pieces, Andes mint pieces and Oreos as alternate goodies for my mini chocolate brownie cupcakes. All of them worked, so if you make these, feel free to experiment with whatever combination strikes your fancy.
I don't own mini muffin pans and I feel like those are not really something I need to own. Honestly, I feel the same way about mini muffins as I do about mini brownies. Fine, but not nearly as good as the real thing. Instead, I baked my mini brownie cupcakes in regular muffin tins and in a bouchon silicon tray. I added 2 tablespoons of batter and 2 tablespoons of chocolate to the regular muffin pans, and used the 1 tablespoon proportions for the bouchon pan. They were done after only 18-19 minutes in my oven. The batter in the bouchon pan rose all the way up to the top of the pan, even though it's about double the height of a regular mini muffin pan. The batter in my regular muffin tins rose up to the top of that pan and seemed to sink a fair amount after cooling. Neither version or size seemed better than the other, although the brownies in the bouchon pan were much more difficult to remove and not nearly as pretty after removal.
While these mini chocolate brownie cupcakes weren't my favorite, I'm certain they would make a great treat for kids events or other parties as a single batch makes about 24-30 standard size brownie muffins or 48-60 mini muffins. I know some people like lighter, cake-like brownies, in which case these brownies might be a star recipe. Head over to Baked Sunday Mornings to get the recipe and see what others thought.
I was disappointed for the same reason. They were still tasty, but not what I would call a brownie-- glad it wasn't just me. Good idea to try all those mix-ins-- I'll have to try them out sometime!