two-bite nutella brownies

You know what made me choose this recipe?

• Four ingredients (that I could shorten to three); and
• 88 calories per brownie.

My criteria for baking these days mostly boils down to the latter, but the shortened ingredient list helped a lot, too.

I'm really surprised at how well these turned out for only three ingredients!

Actually, no. What I'm really surprised about is that I own a mini cupcake pan. Seriously, who knew? When did I get that? Wait. Mom probably gave it to me, so where did she get it? Strange. I miss a knife I haven't seen in 10 years, but I have no idea where a whole muffin tin came from. Brains work mysteriously.

I do not own any miniature cupcake liners, though, so I buttered and floured the hell out of that pan. Now that's the Idle Wife I know and love.

Anyway back to the brownies. They're sweet and fudgy with crispy edges and a crinkly top. Everything I look for in a brownie.

But, truthfully, my entire plan from the moment I saw that I owned a mini cupcake pan was this:

Yeah. That's a mini Drumstick (they make them!) squished on top of a mini brownie.

And this is what happened moments later:

It was delicious but you're not surprised at that, are you?

slightly adapted from Desserts 4 Today: Flavorful Desserts with Just Four Ingredients by Abby Dodge via Savory Sweet Life

makes 12 mini brownies

1/2 cup Nutella

1 egg

5 tablespoons flour

Find a mini muffin or cupcake tin. Line it with mini cupcake liners OR do what I did and butter and flour the hell out of each cup.

Mix all of the ingredients together. You don't have to get fancy. I just put them all together and blended with a spatula (you don't even have to get your mixer out for this one!).

Spoon the batter equally into the prepared mini muffin cups.

Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean (or until they look just done).

{note} You can make these with nuts and stuff, but personally, I don't like nuts and stuff in brownies.

{notes} I've since made these again, but we didn't have quite enough Nutella (I'm looking at you, Idle Husband); therefore, I didn't use a full measured 1/2 cup. I think because of that, the brownies turned out puffy and cake-like without as many brownie characteristics. They were still SUPER delish (maybe even more so). Go with it if you find yourself in a similar spot.

{noting} Don't be me and think, "Hey! What if I used peanut butter instead of Nutella and made peanut butter brownies!!" Cuz it won't work and it'll taste bland and even less peanut buttery than you could ever have imagined. You have to add sugar and they'll be more like cookies. I tried it. Trust me. We saved it by smearing -- you guessed it -- Nutella all over them.

{noted} Aren't the little cats cute?! My cousin sent them to me all the way from Australia, so unfortunately, I can't tell you where to get them. But I can tell you that they're super amazing little post-it cats -- post-it long cats! I didn't really know what they were at first, but when I figured it out, I decided they HAD to go on toothpicks. If you find yourself with something cute, don't forget it's SUPER easy to tape just about anything onto a toothpick to use as quick and easy cupcake decoration!