Super Mario Question Block Brownies
March 4, 2008
Rich brownies with buttercream frosting.
These brownies are dense, chewy, and delicious! There's no surprise inside these question blocks, but you could add some sort of nut into the mix, if you're into that sort of thing. Walnuts are always a good match. If you'd like to include walnuts, adding a half cup to the brownie mix before baking will do the trick.
Ingredients for brownies:
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 cup all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt
Pre-heat oven to 350F!
Chop up the butter and add to the chocolate chips and sugar in a double boiler.
While the water's bubbling away for the double boiler, add the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt together into a bowl and mix.
To help the melting along, stir the bowl in the double boiler every once in a while. It'll take about five minutes for everything to melt.
Once everything's melted, pour the chocolate mixture into the bowl with the dry ingredients.
Mix until everything is well blended. The dough will be thick, but it's not enough to blow out your handmixer's motor. Hopefully.
Scoop up the mixture and place into a greased 9" baking pan.
Bake for about 25 minutes. The brownies are done when poked with a knife and the knife comes out clean.
After the brownies have cooled, cut into squares. The easiest way to do this is do flip the brownie pan over, give it a little pat to help the brownies out, and then get to square cutting. I did lose a couple of brownies in this event as they broke into pieces. Very tasty pieces, I might add.
Now to bring on the buttercream!
Ingredients for buttercream frosting:
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
3 to 4 tablespoons milk
Food coloring
Black gel
Orange gel
Soften the butter in a microwave. You just want it the butter just soft enough so it's easy to mix, you don't want to liquidate it. To the butter, add the powdered sugar, two tablespoons of milk, and mix. Add in a tablespoon of milk at a time until the frosting is a good spreading consistency.
To get the color of the question block, add a few drops yellow and red food coloring until you get the proper color. This batch of frosting took five drops yellow and one red.


Everything's all set, so it's decorating time! Things shouldn't get too messy until you go hogwild with the frosting knife.
Take a brownie and get a good dollop of frosting on it. Don't smoosh the frosting around too much, or else you'll pull the brownie top into the frosting.
Use black gel to create the question mark dropshadow.

Follow the outline with orange gel.
Add the black dots at the corners.
Makes about 16 brownies, depending how on big the blocks are.


