Day 5 … Peppermint Brownie Bars

Can you do a bang up Christmas Cookie platter without something peppermint? Well, I would say yes because I think a lot of peppermint recipes make everything in the dang box taste minty so you’ve got to approach the flavor with caution. Let me amend that … you’ve got to approach peppermint extract with caution as it tends to overpower everything. Pack those cookies separately if you can. (Note I did a peppermint cookie in 2016 but skipped the flavor in 2017 for this reason.) That all said, I think I’ve found a way around this conundrum. For Day 5 of the 12 Days of Cookies, may I present Peppermint Brownie Bars. Oh you bet.

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stash these in your purse … Peppermint Patty Brownies

Maida Heatter sounds like a delightful woman. The more I read about this tiny little South Florida spitfire, the more I like her.  And I really like her recipes – they are always good and always work perfectly, a rarity.  I was particularly charmed by a little paragraph in a Saveur article on how she keeps a stash of cellophane wrapped brownies in her purse to give to people she meets.  She gave one to a man she met in the late 1940’s who later became her husband.  I like to think the brownie had something to do with it.  I can’t remember if I bought one of her cookbooks, read about her in a magazine or heard of her elsewhere first.  But I do know when that issue of Saveur landed in my mailbox in 1997 – Issue #22 – the cover photo of a chocolate beauty called Queen Mother’s Cake was mesmerizing.  I had to make it.  So I did – and the chocolate cigarettes too.  Then I made her Polka Dot Cheesecake, the East 62nd Street Lemon Cake and finally the Palm Beach Brownies studded with peppermint patties.  They were all outstanding and it was probably the first, and only, time I made every single recipe attached to an article.

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