The Decadent Addition Boxed Brownies Crave

When the craving for something rich and decadent strikes and the cupboard is looking rather bare, brownie mix can call out like a siren song. While boxed brownies on their own are often tempting enough, there's a ready-made addition that adds an entirely new dimension to your run-of-the-mill chocolate-forward flavor profile in the form of cookie butter. If you aren't familiar with it, cookie butter is a sweet, creamy paste that is packaged and looks a little like peanut butter, but is made with crispy and spiced speculoos cookies.

Long popular in Europe, cookie butter is a tempting concoction that lends a creamy texture and warming cinnamon and caramel notes to everything from pancakes to breakfast toast. It also makes a delicious topping for ice cream and lends an extra touch of complexity to baked goods like muffins, cookies, and, yes, that boxed brownie mix sitting on your shelf. Give one of the best store-bought boxed brownie mixes a glow-up by swirling a few generous spoonfuls of cookie butter into the unbaked batter once you've prepared it and put it in the pan.

If you really want to level up your boxed mix, blast beyond that traditional pan of brownies with a simple swirl of this spread into a cookie butter brownie bar mash-up. For this version, spread some cookie butter in a parchment-lined pan and freeze it until it is a solid sheet. Remove the frozen sheet, then add half of your prepared brownie mix to the pan, top with the frozen cookie butter layer, and then add the remaining brownie batter. Before baking, you can also top the mix with whole speculoos cookies. Once cooled, cut the confection into individual bars and you have a late-night or after-school sweet treat for the books.

Cookie butter is easy to find (there's an uber popular variety at Trader Joe's) or you can even make your own.What's more, it lasts for more than a year in the pantry, so it makes a good staple to keep on hand (along with that brownie mix) for when a craving for sweets strikes. For coffee fans, you could also swirl some cookie butter into your morning cup to enjoy with your brownies. Or, combine both with your mix, upping the complexity of your boxed brownies even further by replacing the water in the batter with coffee.