Heart Shaped Valentine's Day Brownies

I am the first to admit that Valentine's Day is just another day in the Giuliano house.  I've never been big on Valentine's Day, except in elementary/high school when friends could send each other chocolate because that's obviously amazing.  Flowers are expensive and get eaten by the cat and chocolate makes me fat so John and I usually skip the gifts altogether.  Blasphemous to some I'm sure but it works for us.  Or at least it did until Roman came around. 

For some reason the little turkey makes me want to celebrate even the smallest of "holidays" just for his sake.  On a recent Mom only shopping day I came across some super cute heart shaped tins at Dollarama.  At the time I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with them but I knew I wanted to make something for Valentine's Day.  The other day it finally hit me, brownies!!!  Who doesn't love brownies?!

Brownies
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1t vanilla
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup flour
1/4t salt
1/4t baking powder

Preheat oven to 350° and grease heart shaped tins.  Melt butter in a sauce pan over medium heat.  Remove pan from heat a whisk in sugar, eggs and vanilla.  Mix in cocoa powder, flour, salt and baking powder until well combined.  Pour batter into tins and bake at 350° for 15-20 minutes, do not over bake.  You want some of the batter to stick to a toothpick when inserted into the centre.  This way you'll have a delicious gooey brownie!

If you don't have or can't find the heart shaped pans you would also bake this recipe in an 8x8 baking dish, lined with parchment paper, and use cookie cutters to cut shapes from the brownie.  The best part of this option?  You can eat all the "leftover" bits!

I decided to amp up the yum factor a bit with a little bit of buttercream icing but the brownies are delicious even without it.  Hopefully this will be the only brownie I eat from the batch since I'm still recovering from the Christmas food gorging.  I plan to pop the rest of these ad boys into the freezer where they will wait for me until I need a chocolate fix.  So probably later tonight...