TWD: Chipster Topped Brownies and Mango Bread

In the words of Britney Spears: oops... I did it again- two weeks have gone by and although I have been baking right along with Tuesdays with Dorie, I have yet to post about the recipes! The good news is that we are now fully moved into our apartment. Whew, hopefully things will be more regular here at Sandmuffin now that everything is more settled (at least until the baby comes!).

Ok, so this week's TWD recipe was Chipster Topped Brownies chosen by Beth of Supplicious. Basically these are fudgy brownies topped with a layer of chocolate chip cookies... pure genius!! The only problem was that I underbaked mine quite a bit. You see the top layer bakes and browns faster than the brownie layer can firm up so I misjudged when to pull them out. So, I tried to salvage them by putting them back in the oven after they had sat and cooled for well over an hour on the counter. It sort of worked, as in, pretty much the whole giant pan got eaten, but honestly I want to try this one again because I can tell that it is a really decadent, wonderful recipe if baked properly!!
Ok and last week's recipe was Fresh Mango Bread chosen by Kelly of Baking with the Boys. I was really excited about this recipe because it sounded so tropical: fresh mango, lime zest, lots of ginger, raisins, and cinnamon and it did not disapoint! In fact, the bread turned out very differently from how I had imagined it would- it was very moist and the flavor was complex and the outside had a wonderful chewy crust. The thing that struck me as odd about this recipe was the baking time of one and a half hours! That seemed so long- but I went ahead and stuck with it (I tented with foil after one hour) and the bread really needed all of that time to bake properly.

Here is Helen Mae after eating her first ever New Orleans style snowball- obviously she had a lime flavored one: