This post was supposed to be about the precious, brilliantly executed ice cream sandwiches I made as a last minute Valentine’s Day dessert. The pictures should be showcasing thick wedges of vanilla ice cream packed with fresh raspberries, sandwiched by two slices of chewy, chocolatey homemade brownies.

The pictures were going to beguile you, ask you to quick hurry up! Just take a bite and put it back the other way around so no one will notice! The ice cream would begin to melt, sending luscious rivulets of creamy vanilla down the sides, puddling sensuously on the plate beneath the sandwich to mingle with the juices of a few strategically placed berries.

In reality, the pictures were for crap. The ice cream straight-up melted and turned the gooey brownies into a sludge that DOESN’T look like it belongs on a plate, let alone the kitchen.

The sandwiches were for crap. The raspberries froze to the point of being crunchy and the flavors never melded together. It was brownie, ice cream, and berries but none of them playing together. Boring.

And the special ice cream sandwich mold I had from Williams Sonoma, as I am sure you have gathered by now, was for CAAAHRAP. Instead of popping out sharp, clean, perfectly shaped sandwiches that would make Martha Stewart plot my dramatic demise, that piece of CAAAHRAP made one smeary, mushy mess.

Crap.

So, I made lemonade out of my lemons.

Or rather, a fancy-looking dessert out of the leftover scraps of my epic fail.

And the bonus is that you, yes YOU, can look like a superstar. A fancy one with a Chanel bag and expensive perfume.

So, here’s the deal. Take your berries, take some brownie crumbles and arrange both in a pretty little glass Got it? Okay, put it to the side because the next step may just blow your mind and change your life and make you want to kiss me or hug me or at the very least pinch my bum.

Take some vanilla ice cream. Any kind that makes your skirt fly up. Homemade or from the grocery store. Yada yada.

Take that vanilla ice cream. Get it out from underneath of your skirt, for God’s sake. This is a family show. Spoon that ice cream up in a dish and then just leave it alone. Let it melt. No, don’t freak out. You’ve now got yourself a creme anglaise.

No shit. Now put it all over the berries and brownies. You’re fancy and you never knew it.

Raspberry Brownie Anglaise

1 pint raspberries, rinsed and dried
2-3 brownies, crumbled
1 cup vanilla ice cream, melted

Dividing the raspberries amongst two dishes, arrange the raspberries with the brownie crumbles sprinkled over the top. Spoon the melted ice cream over the top of the berries, allowing the melted ice cream to drift to the bottom. Serve.

I absolutely, hands-down-and-shake-them-all-around, love the peppermint brownie that Starbucks puts out for the holidays. Like, in a way that borders on scary. I seriously don’t know what they put in them, but I surmise that crack is highly likely.

Well, the other day, I NEEDED one of those brownies. But I wasn’t leaving the house because my hair also NEEDED to see a shampoo bottle and, frankly, that just wasn’t on the schedule.

So, I got to gathering the ingredients for a homemade, copycat recipe I found online, grumbling all the way through because that junk was complicated. Each recipe called for multiple steps, refrigeration, doing the hokey pokey, etc. Anyway, I’m whizzing around the kitchen, grabbing bowls, fiddling with ovens, hoisting flour, dodging puppies and my clumsiness just got the best of me. While reaching for the sugar on an overhead shelf, I got smacked, square in the head, with a bag of chocolate chips.

Story of my life.

When I bent to retrieve the bag, I saw that it wasn’t just any ole’ bag of chips. It was that bag of Nestle Tollhouse Dark Chocolate and Mint Morsels I haphazardly threw into my basket a few weeks ago on a spree at Target.

Oh, now there’s an idea.

You could say it was divine intervention. I say it was a Christmas miracle for this little Jewish girl.

Instead of making that copycat Starbucks recipe, I made a brownie that has all the basic components of those blessed Starbucks treats: chocolate, peppermint, cream cheese, brownies, calories, calories, and CALORIES.

The result? Um, let’s just say I found out how many brownies I can fit into my mouth at once.

It’s 3, and it isn’t something that I’m proud of. But at least I didn’t have to wash my hair for them.

Peppermint Chip Brownies
(adapted from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything)

2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, roughly chopped
1 stick unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup flour
pinch salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon flour
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup Nestle Tollhouse Dark Chocolate and Mint Morsels

Preheat the oven to 350.

First prepare the cream cheese swirl by creaming 2 tablespoons butter and the cream cheese with 1/4 cup of sugar. Beat in one egg and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. Fold in 1 tablespoon flour. Set aside

In a medium bowl, combine the flour and salt.

In another medium bowl set over a pot of simmering water, warm the butter and chocolate until the butter is all melted and the chocolate is halfway melted. Remove from the heat and whisk until all the chocolate is melted. Whisk in the sugar until combined. Add the eggs, one at a time, and continue whisking until the mixture is well blended. Add the chocolate mixture to the flour mixture and fold together until combined. Spread the brownie mixture into to an 8 by 8 pan.

Pour the cream cheese mixture on top of the brownie mixture and swirl to achieve a marbled effect. Sprinkle with the chocolate/peppermint chips

Bake the brownies 20 – 25 minutes and allow them to cool before slicing.

*If you can’t find the mint chip mix, just use semi sweet chocolate chips and add a bit of peppermint extract in the cream cheese swirl mixture.