Boxed Brownies Are 10x More Flavorful When You Mix In This Crunchy Treat

Boxed brownie mix is perhaps the best dessert pantry staple to always have handy. Beyond the fact that it's one of the easiest and fastest ways to produce a pan of warm, fudgy brownies, boxed brownie mix is incredibly easy to upgrade with marshmallow Fluff, and it offers a fun, delicious way to use up leftover Halloween candy. Since most key ingredients in the correct ratios are already in the mix, it's the perfect foundation for building elevated brownies that taste gourmet, especially if you infuse them with lesser-known flavors that feel a bit special, such as Biscoff cookies (or cookie butter).

Biscoff cookies are light, crisp, buttery, and gently spiced with cinnamon to produce a comfortingly delicious bite. Belgian in origin, they're a style of shortbread cookie that's locally called "speculoos," with Lotus Bakeries' Biscoff cookies being perhaps the best-known brand. These cookies are delicious additions to brownie mix, as they add a nutty, spicy flavor and a delightfully crunchy texture that plays beautifully against the fudgy texture of the brownies.

To infuse your brownies with these flavors and textures, it's a fairly simple matter of adding a little over a cup of the crushed cookies to a standard box of brownie mix (Baker's Corner chewy brownie mix is our top choice). Once baked, your brownies will be wonderfully aromatic, lightly spicy from the cinnamon present in the cookies, along with a buttery undertone. For the best Biscoff-infused brownies, you'll want to pay attention to how you add these cookies.

To ensure a lovely texture and concentrated bites of Biscoff flavor when adding crushed cookies to your brownies, it's important to crush them to the right size. Smashing them into sandy crumbs will simply make them disappear into the finished product, while leaving them too large sets the stage for uneven distribution. Bits a little smaller than a dime, however, are about the perfect size to give your brownies a distinct texture along with a beautiful spicy aroma and flavor. Gently fold them into the batter until they're evenly distributed right before pouring it into your baking dish. For extra crunch, sprinkle some of the cookie chunks over the top of the batter before baking.

If you like, you can also add velvety, rich, delicious cookie butter to your brownies for extra speculoos flavor. Lotus Bakeries makes its own brand of this treat, using the cookies themselves as the main ingredient to create a spread similar in texture to peanut butter that tastes just like speculoos in a jar. To add it to your brownies, simply drizzle about ⅓ cup of the spread into the batter after you've poured it into your baking dish. This creates a ribbon of fudgy texture throughout your finished brownies. There's also no rule against adding both Biscoff cookie products to your brownies for intense speculoos flavor and a variety of textures. You can also mix and match either one with the addition of butterscotch or white chocolate chips for even more buttery flavor.