Chocolate Mint Chip Brownies

Forget extract. These brownies get their mint flavor the real way: fresh mint leaves blitzed with sugar in a food processor until pulverized into a fragrant, green-flecked mint sugar. The result is a cleaner, brighter mint flavor that doesn’t taste like toothpaste.

The brownie itself is seriously fudgy. Melted semi-sweet chocolate and butter form the base, and there’s just enough flour to hold things together. The batter will look glossy and pourable, and the surface will still feel soft when you pull the pan from the oven. That’s exactly right. These firm up as they cool.

And here’s the thing: cool them overnight. Not an hour, not two. Overnight. The texture goes from soft and fragile to dense and sliceable, and the mint flavor deepens as it sits.

Kitchen Tips

• Process the mint and sugar until you can’t see any leaf pieces. Chunks of mint in a brownie are not pleasant.
• Melt the chocolate with residual heat, not direct flame. Turn off the burner, add the chopped chocolate to the hot butter, and let it sit for 5 minutes. Gentle heat means smooth chocolate.
• Don’t overbake. At 35 minutes a toothpick will still come out with wet crumbs. That’s your target.
• Line the pan with parchment for easy removal. These are too fudgy to flip out cleanly otherwise.

Variations

• Use dark chocolate instead of semi-sweet for a more bitter, adult-leaning brownie.
• Swap the mint chocolate chips for white chocolate chips and the fresh mint for dried lavender.
• Top with a thin layer of ganache and crushed candy canes during the holidays.