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What’s better than a simple brownie? Ina Garten’s next-level brownie pudding recipe takes the best part of brownies and marries it with a molten lava cake for a sinful Barefoot Contessa creation that makes the perfect dessert.

Ina Garten and Savannah Guthrie on Today 2018
Ina Garten and Savannah Guthrie | Nathan Congleton/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images

Barefoot Contessa’s brownie pudding recipe is ooey-gooey

Garten’s brownie pudding recipe is such a decadent dessert, with a gooey center that pairs perfectly with the crusty brownie texture. There are just six ingredients and one small optional addition that provides just a hint of flavor. The dessert can be topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a drizzle of chocolate syrup as well.

During an episode of Barefoot Contessa, Garten demonstrated how easy the brownie pudding is to make, as she explained how she found the way to her husband Jeffrey’s heart with brownies. “When I was 16 and Jeffrey was 18, I used to make him brownies and send them in a big box to school,” she shared. “I think he was the most popular guy in the dorm when they arrived.”

“So I think brownie pudding is very romantic for our anniversary,” she added.

Barefoot Contessa’s brownie pudding recipe

Garten’s brownie pudding recipe, according to the Food Network star, “is really more like something between a brownie and a pudding. It’s very sort of like a molten thing in the middle.”

Ingredients

  • 1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, plus extra for buttering the dish
  • 4 extra-large eggs, at room temperature
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 3/4 cup cocoa powder
  • 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
  • Seeds scraped from 1 vanilla bean
  • 1 tablespoon framboise liqueur, optional

She starts by combining eggs and sugar, then adding cocoa powder and flour after sifting them together. Garten scrapes the seeds from a vanilla bean and adds them to the batter.

“There’s always one ingredient in a dish that you really can’t quite taste, but it makes everything else taste better,” she said before adding the optional raspberry liqueur.

Garten then slowly adds the dry ingredients with the mixer running on low. “The key about baking this brownie pudding is that it’s sort of molten in the middle and it’s baked on the outside so everybody gets a little of each,” she explained while making the batter.

She adds two sticks of melted butter which makes the finished product moist and “molten.”

The batter is poured into a baking dish that’s been buttered and the dish is put in a water bath so it bakes evenly. Garten places the dish in a larger pan and pours in hot tap water until it rises halfway up the side of the baking dish. Bake at 325 degrees for one hour. She explained it will be baked on the outside and “like pudding on the inside.”

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Ina Garten Said She Once Worried ‘This Is the Stupidest Thing I’ve Ever Done,’ but Her Husband Jeffrey Had the Perfect Advice

Ina Garten’s outrageous brownies

If you’re more of brownie purist, Garten has a recipe for her outrageous brownies that are loaded with chocolate chips and chopped walnuts. She has a special ingredient she says enhances the chocolate flavor — coffee granules.

When demonstrating how to make the brownie recipe on the Food Network’s All-Star Desserts, Garten shared, “I think this is the most popular thing I’ve ever made at Barefoot Contessa. We’d sell like a thousand of them a week.”

“And then because chocolate is really enhanced by the flavor of coffee, I put in three tablespoons of coffee granules,” she added. “Not prepared coffee, but instant coffee granules.”

According to Garten, the coffee is “one of those magic things that really brings out the chocolate flavor.”

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