Heaven in a Crock-Pot

Welcome guest Pam Hillman who tempted me when she shared this recipe. I now have the ingredients on hand. I can't wait!

Heaven in a Crock-Pot

by Pam Hillman

This is my second visit to the Yankee Belle Café and guess what I blogged about last time?

Yep, you guessed it.

Chocolate.

Oreo Cookie Balls to be exact.

Obviously, I have a thing for rich, dark, ooey, gooey chocolate! If you can’t resist a scrumptious looking concoction (preferably paired with vanilla bean ice cream) with dark chocolate oozing down the sides, check out my Yum Pinterest board. Or, goodness, just look at the menu bar right here in the Café! I never knew there were so many scrumptious-looking desserts. If they taste half as good as they look… In the words of the famous New York baker extraordinaire, Ruth Logan Herne, OH.MY.STARS!

I’m not really much of a cook, I just throw food in an iron skillet, a casserole dish, or the crock pot and let ‘er rip, but goodness, how can you mess up anything to do with chocolate? And this recipe, Heaven in a Crockpot, aka Crockpot Brownies, is so easy it’s unbelievable. It took longer to stage the pictures than it did to make this.

Really!

Look at this. Everything you need RIGHT here in the crockpot, ready to stir up into mouth-watering goodness oozing with chocolaty yumminess! Btw, this is plenty rich WITHOUT the extra chocolate chips. I bought them because I thought I’d seen that on the recipe. No need to add extra chocolate chips. Trust me.

Melt butter in microwave and then throw everything in the bowl, like this:

Stir, stir, stir! Unlike other brownie mixes, I don’t think it matters how much you stir. Lots or little. Just do it.

Dump/spoon/shovel into your crockpot. (Are we allowed to lick the spoon? Thought not…)

Turn crockpot on LOW and wait… This is honestly the HARDEST part. It’s supposed to cook 3 hours, and that’s about right for the crockpot I used. One lady on Pinterest commented that the center was still gooey and she felt like it needed to cook 5 hours, but the gooey part was like mega-thick chocolate syrup, not like dough, so it was perfect-O!

Heaven in a Crockpot is like one of those microwaved chocolate lava cakes multiplied by six… and even yummier!

Still waiting… One hour and thirty-three minutes and fifteen seconds into cooking time. Sigh…

The end result looks a lot like it does at the half-way mark, but the center is firmer. When you dip your spoon down into it, the center should be gooey, the brownie cake all around the edges of the crockpot. I took a knife and pried the brownie away from the edges of crockpot. When dipping, make sure you get some of the brownie AND the gooey center.

And….Tada! My masterpiece! I staged this with my cute little cut-crystal bowl and my white linens. I took a gazillion pictures before I took a SINGLE BITE! Now that’s dedication to the Yankee-Belle Café. I didn’t know I had that much willpower.

Oh, the recipe. Here she blows…

Heaven in a Crockpot

1 box Betty Crocker fudge brownie mix

½ cup butter, melted

4 eggs

1 pouch Betty Crocker chocolate chip cookie mix

Mix it all together.

Cook about 3 hours IN A CROCKPOT on low.

Top with vanilla ice cream.

And enjoy!

PS. In spite of my best efforts, I couldn’t find any information about how this dessert holds up after being refrigerated or frozen. I suspect it’s because no one has ever had any LEFT. But, again, in the interest of taking one for the Yankee-Belle Café team, I wrestled the last little bit of heaven out of My Cowboy’s hands and refrigerated it. I’m happy to report that it’s just as good (cold or nuked 20 seconds) the next day as it was the first day.

BIO: Pam Hillman was born and raised on a dairy farm in Mississippi and spent her teenage years perched on the seat of a tractor raking hay. In those days, her daddy couldn’t afford two cab tractors with air conditioning and a radio, so Pam drove the Allis Chalmers 110. Even when her daddy asked her if she wanted to bale hay, she told him she didn’t mind raking. Raking hay doesn’t take much thought so Pam spent her time working on her tan and making up stories in her head. Now, that’s the kind of life every girl should dream of! Claiming Mariah is her second novel. www.pamhillman.com