brownie pudding

Oh my chocolaty goodness. If you get together with a group of girls, be it a book club, girls night in, bible study, whatever...this dessert would be a welcome addition to the festivities; you have my word. It reminds me of college when my roommates and I would sit around the kitchen counter, each armed with our own spoon, eating under baked brownies fresh out of the oven. Granted, we were all athletes at the time so doing something like that had absolutely no effect on our waistline, not so much the case now. This is not a healthy dessert, not even close. BUT if you're sharing with friends, it's worth the indulgence. (Even if you're not, that's okay too. Who cares what anybody else thinks.) Trust me, you don't want to go through life having not experienced Ina Garten's Brownie Pudding. It would be a crying shame.

A few recipe notes: I had to look up what framboise liqueur is so it obviously didn't make it into the mix, but I now know that it's a raspberry liqueur and you could easily substitute raspberry juice for it. Yum. What's not to love about chocolate and raspberries? Also, I didn't have a vanilla bean so I used 1 tablespoon vanilla extract instead. The closest baking dish I have to what Ina recommended is an 11 x 7 x 1 1/2 and it worked without any modifications to the baking time. Oh, and one more thing, when beating the eggs and sugar together, I had the mixer going for 7 minutes to get the thick, light yellow consistency that the recipe desires.

You should know that this is a very rich dessert so you'll need a tall glass of milk to wash it down, as my husband reminds me to make sure I mention. (I don't drink milk so water worked just fine for me.) Or vanilla ice cream would be great with it too.

My daughter helped me put the brownie pudding together last night, but because it has such a long baking time, she was in bed by the time it was done. There's no lapse in her memory, though. When she came downstairs this morning and I asked what she'd like for breakfast, her answer, as sweet as she can sound, "A brownie, please." You'll just have to guess whether we ate brownie pudding for breakfast though, because we aren't telling.