My wife gave me the idea for this fun and delicious way to jazz up our holiday dessert tray. She saw this on another site and described it to me, and I took the idea and ran with it. It reminds me of something my sister-in-law made for a cheese platter. She used sliced almonds to turn a piece of soft cheese into a pinecone. While there's nothing wrong with cheese...chocolate is so much better!
To make this treat, you'll need freshly baked brownies, sliced almonds, dipping chocolate, and confectioner's sugar. You can used a boxed brownie mix, if you like, but I couldn't find one that didn't contain "bioengineered food ingredients," so I baked brownies from scratch. I used the Best Ever Chewy Brownies recipe created by Tessa Arias for her Handle the Heat site. It's a very specific recipe that obsesses over details, but for good reason. For most of the recommendations you might be tempted to compromise on, Tessa has pictures to demonstrate the results of straying from the recipe and process. For example, my pictures demonstrate what happens when you misread 1 tablespoon of corn starch and only use 1 teaspoon instead :)
Once your brownies are cool enough to handle, cut them into pieces and mold each piece into a cone shape:
Then, insert sliced almonds into each cone to give the appearance of a pinecone:
My wife says that I put too many almonds in each one, but I went for authenticity. Next, drizzle melted dipping chocolate over each brownie pinecone...
...and dust with confectioner's sugar:
I hope you give this dessert project a try. I guarantee that your friends and family will be impressed, especially when you tell them how long it took to push all of those sliced almonds into the brownies, or how long it took to find that many sliced almonds that weren't broken in the sliced almond package ;)
