Puff Pastry Brownie Mess

First of all... this recipe was a total experiment. I don't claim to be a chef. I'm just a chick who likes sugar and hopes her kitchen won't explode one day. That is all.

That food forum I mentioned, the one that does the weekly ingredient challenges? Yeah, it totally stumped me this week. Puff pastry. Now, there's a million things one can google and find as far as puff pastry recipes go... brie en croute, turnovers (both sweet and savory), quiche crusts, napoleons, a thousand different pinwheel rounds... but I wanted something more original. Something with a little more ohmigosh.

I happened to have a bowl of leftover brownie batter in my fridge from a recipe I made Friday night, and I had a total fat-kid moment and thought, "Puff pastry AND brownies? Combined! Gasp!" Now I know how Mr. Reese's felt at the dawning of his epiphany. You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!

Unfortunately, the idea looked a whole lot better in my head than it actually performed in execution. It was fairly ugly, actually. A bit of a mess. Turned out a little like the new Bieber album. You don't want to admit you'd like such a thing, but secretly, it's awesome.

There's no real recipe for this--basically just some frozen puff pastry and a cup or two of brownie batter. Bake at 400. That's about it. But we all love food porn, so here's some eye candy to get your Monday started off with some gooey, drippy chocolatey love.


First, I shmeered two sheets of puff pastry with a thin layer of chilled brownie batter.



Then I cut the sheets into six strips and stacked them on top of each other, keeping one slice un-shmeered.



I then cut my stack o' strips into four square segments and stacked those. This is me struggling to keep the stack upright.



Then, I lined a loaf pan with parchment. My loaf pan is Pampered Chef stoneware, and I figured this would get messy. Since I can't use soap on stoneware, I went ahead and lined it. This whole thing might have turned out better if my loaf pan wasn't so big. Putting these in something a bit more snug would probably have helped.

I laid the stack down on its side in the loaf pan and baked at 400 degrees until puffy and warm. Oh, how the house smelled of chocolate and sin.



And this is my puffy chocolate abomination fresh from the oven.



I burned my fingers taking this photo. Just sayin'.



Sweet, chocolatey, gooey, pull-apart brownie pastry mess...