Slutty Brownies, Take 1

I really enjoy baking.  Not to toot my own horn, but I do think I've got a bit of a knack for it.  I can at least make really tasty cheesecakes, if nothing else.  Plus my oatmeal cranberry white chocolate chip cookies are pretty dang awesome too.

Last night I decided I wanted to finally try my hand at making Slutty Brownies...

Source: whatsgabycooking.com via Andrea on Pinterest

Cookie dough topped with brownie batter, with Oreo cookies sandwiched in between.  What's not to love about this combination?

Well, they didn't turn out all that great.  I think the brownie recipe is likely a good one, however I ended up over-baking the brownies because of a malfunction with the cookie dough layer.  I ended up using the cookie dough recipe that this blogger had listed, rather than my own recipe.  I wish I had gone with my gut and switched it up to my fallback recipe when the quantity and ratio of sugars for the cookie dough set off an alarm (1.5 cups granulated sugar mixed with 1/2 cup of brown sugar - compared to my usual ratio of 3/4 cup of each type of sugar, with the quantities of all other ingredients being practically identical).

The abundance of white sugar in the recipe caused my cookie dough layer to pretty much liquify and melt (some of it actually came up through the Oreo and brownie layers to crystallize on top of the whole thing).  I had baked my brownies for the recommended 30 minute bake time, checked for doneness, and when the top brownie layer was very gooey, I put them back in for an additional 5 minutes.  After checking again to see the brownie layer was still gooey, I decided to give just another 5 more minutes.  After 40 minutes of baking, the brownie layer finally appeared to be in good shape, so I pulled the pan out of the oven and let the brownies rest on a cooling rack.

After letting them rest for a bit, I pulled the brownies out of the baking pan via the aluminum foil lining recommended in the baking instructions, only to find that the cookie dough layer was a molten mess, and no where near set up properly.  Since I had nothing to lose at this point, as I didn't want to be left with oozing cookie dough, I decided to put the brownies back in the oven for another 10 minutes.  After it had finished, I let the pan rest on my cooling rack for about 15 or 20 minutes, and then pulled the brownies back out of the pan.  Along the outside edge, the cookie dough appeared to have set up.  It wasn't until I cut into them that I discovered I was left with about 2mm of cookie dough lining the bottom of my slutty brownies.

For my one last attempt with this cookie dough recipe, I took the remaining dough I had (you only use half of the cookie dough for a 9x9 pan of brownies) and followed the recommendation of the blogger and decided to make cookies with it.  Before I made the cookies, I let the rest of the dough I had sit in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes to make sure it was chilled so the batter wouldn't spread too much.  I then scooped the chilled dough onto a chilled cookie sheet and placed the cookies in the oven, where they proceeded to spread out/melt so much that I was left with cookies that were a good 4 inches in diameter and about as thin as crepes.

The cookies ended up in the trash last night.  Most of the brownies likely will find their way there as well, after I do my best to salvage the best part of the brownies, aka the moister center.  I definitely want to try making these again though.  Next time I'll try it with my cookie dough recipe, add a tad more flour to the brownie recipe, and might upgrade to double stuff Oreos, because you cannot ever go wrong with them.  Wish me luck!