While thinking of what I wanted to bring to our New Year’s Eve gathering I knew I wanted something that was simple for everyone to grab and eat while we were playing games. I went with a Brownie Parfait that I just made up as I thought about it. What’s even better is it only has three parts and since they are in a cup just throw it away when your done eating it, can’t beat that for easy clean up.
For the brownie part, I made a box mix, the Chewy Fudge Brownies from Duncan Hines is our favorite. You can make your favorite recipe if you want, but using the mix just made life easier. After they had cooled I cut them into small squares. I got about 60 squares from my 9×13 pan.
You will also need some whipped cream. Buy this from the store if you wish, but it is easy to make on your own and it tastes so much better. The video bellow calls for 1 cup of heavy cream and 2 tablespoons of sugar, but I had to make two batches to have enough for all 12 parfaits. So for the recipe, you will need 2 cups of cream. You need to make sure that the bowl and whisk of your stand mixer are very cold, I had mine in the freezer for about 10 minutes. This and cold cream help air incorporate into the cream better, making a stronger whipped cream. Whip it to a stiff peak, this took about 16 minutes at a speed of 4-5.
Lastly, you will need a batch of ganache. My favorite way to make ganache that I found in one of my Alton Brown cookbooks. You put your chocolate chips in a medium size glass bowl. Heat your heavy cream for about 45 seconds in the microwave, pour it over the chocolate chips. Let it sit for 2 minutes, don’t touch it. After the two minutes stir it to help mix the cream with the chocolate. Keep stirring it until it is smooth and glossy.
In a 9 oz plastic cup layer brownies, ganache, whipped cream, repeat, drizzle with more ganache on top. In my ganache layers, I tried to drizzle a little down on the sides of the cup to make it look fancier. It worked on a few of my cups. Chill them for 2-3 hours so the textures mesh together.
