Monday, October 2, 2017

Pillsbury Thin Mints Brownie Mix Is Worth Hunting Down!


The Good: Easy to prepare, Good mint chocolate flavor, Generally affordable
The Bad: Light on chocolate chunks, Not an "all-in-one" mix
The Basics: Pillsbury Thin Mints Brownie Mix is an easy-to-use brownie mix that delivers good tasting brownies that accurately capture the mint flavor of Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies in brownie form!


The only thing more surprising to me than the fact that is has been years since I last reviewed a Pillsbury mix for a baked good was the fact that until this morning, I could not recall the last time I baked something from a mix. Now, years after using the Pillsbury Premium Chocolate Peppermint Cookie Mix (reviewed here!), I found myself gleefully picking up a box of Pillsbury Thin Mints Brownie Mix and baking.

I found the Pillsbury Thin Mints Brownie Mix on clearance, which surprised me because I had not even heard of a Pillsbury partnership with the Girl Scouts before their shared product was on the clearance racks. Despite that, my love of Thin Mints cookies make it an easy sell when I found the Pillsbury Thin Mints Brownie Mix! Fortunately, the Thin Mints Brownies live up to their promised flavor, making them a pretty wonderful treat.

Basics

Pillsbury Thin Mints Brownie Mix is a dry, powdered mix used to make chocolate mint flavored brownies. The mix comes in a 14.1 oz. cardboard box and should yield a decent-sized pan of brownies (I cut mine large, so nine brownies for me, the serving size 12, though). The Thin Mints Brownies are a soft chocolate brownie with chocolate chunks mixed in!

Pillsbury Thin Mints Brownie Mix is a limited edition flavor of Pillsbury brownie mix. It appears to be already hitting clearance racks, which suggests that it has not been selling well. Unfortunately, at least locally, Pillsbury Thin Mints Brownie Mix is a little more expensive than most brownie mixes. We found ours with an original price of $3.49 a box, though in clearance it has been half that price.

Ease Of Preparation

Pillsbury Thin Mints Brownie Mix is fairly easy to transform into delicious, premium chocolate brownies. In addition to the box of Pillsbury Thin Mints Brownie Mix, one needs an egg, 3 Tablespoons of water and 1/3 cup of vegetable oil. Making Pillsbury Thin Mints Brownie Mix is as easy as any other baked good from a mix.

To make Pillsbury Thin Mints Brownies, simply open the box of Pillsbury Thin Mints Brownie Mix. Inside, there is a bag which contains the brownie powder.

After preheating your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, simply mix the Pillsbury Thin Mints Brownie Mix, egg, water and oil in a mixing bowl. The box recommends blending the ingredients for 50 strokes and that worked for me. Once one has a fairly smooth batter, pour into an 8x8 or 9x9 baking pan and bake for 26 - 32 minutes, depending on the size and type of baking dish.

Our brownies, baked in an 8" x 8" ceramic pan, were ready after 26 minutes - but our oven is a bit overzealous and I was eager to make sure the brownies did not burn. After they cooled for ten minutes, they were easily cut apart for serving.

Taste

Pillsbury Thin Mints Brownies smell vaguely chocolatey and are only at all aromatic while they are warm. The heated brownies smell good for anyone who likes baked chocolate treats, but their scent is entirely neutral once the brownies are cooled.

The Pillsbury Thin Mints Brownies are soft and have a distinct mint flavor to them. The mint blends with the chocolate in a way that perfectly embodies the flavor of Thin Mint cookies without the cookie crunch. In fact, the Thin Mint Brownies manage to be a soft alternative to Thin Mint cookies without losing any of the chocolate mint flavor. These are a very good mint chocolate brownie.

In fact, the only real strike against the finished brownies are their lack of enough chocolate chunks in them. While making a box of the mix up for review, I counted only twenty-two chocolate chunks in my mix (each chunk being about the size of a jumbo chocolate chip). That made the Thin Mints Brownies more minty than chocolate minty and as one who loves both flavors, I wished for just a little more chocolate in the baked good.

The Thin Mints Brownies have a slightly minty aftertaste that endures in the mouth for a few minutes after the last of the brownies is consumed. The aftertaste is pretty wonderful!

Nutrition

Pillsbury Thin Mints Brownie Mix and the subsequent brownies are sweet snacks, not a treat that was ever going to be overly nutritious. The Pillsbury Thin Mints Brownie Mix is made primarily of sugar, wheat flour and semisweet chocolate chunks. I was actually surprised by how there was nothing in the ingredients list that I was unable to pronounce! These brownies are made with actual ingredients, as opposed to chemicals and preservatives, which puts Pillsbury above several of its competitors.

A serving of a single Pillsbury Thin Mints Brownie (there are 12 servings per mix, for those who do not simply gorge upon their brownies) has 190 calories, seventy of which come from fat. The gram of saturated fat in each serving represents eleven percent of one’s RDA of saturated fat. The egg in the cookies adds some cholesterol (6% RDA) and there are 80 milligrams of Sodium per serving. Even so, the prepared brownies have a smattering of iron, so they are not absolutely lacking in nutritional value!

Storage/Clean-Up

Pillsbury Thin Mints Brownie Mix comes nicely sealed in a plastic bag within the box, so the March 21, 2018 expiration date seems a bit conservative to me. The decent shelf life for the mix makes it a good mix to stock up on, especially if it is going off the market.

While mixing the Thin Mints brownie mix up, it is a pretty standard brownie batter and requires one to wash thoroughly any bowls, utensils, pans and clothes that the batter gets on. Once the mix is transformed into brownies, they make the inevitable crumbs, but they are easy enough to wipe up.

Overall

Pillsbury Thin Mints Brownie Mix makes delightful brownies that might well be perfect if only they had a little more chocolate flavor to them - but are a wonderful brownie reinterpretation of the popular Thin Mints cookies!

For other desserts, please visit my reviews of:
Larabar Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Fruit & Nut Bars
Edy's Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Ice Cream
Creme de Pirouline Dark Chocolate Artisan Wafer Rolls

7.5/10

For other food reviews, please visit my Food Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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