Today’s Throwback Thursday isn’t actually from that long ago, just a couple of months. But, I really want to talk about Luthier 🎻, and I really want to talk about these amazingly easy, gluten free, vegan, peppermint browines. I just finished making 100 of them 🫠 for an event, so I don’t think I’ll be making them again any time soon and wanted to talk about them while they’re fresh in my mind.

At a Glance…

Peppermint Brownies!

These brownie bites from Minimalist Baker are moist, fudgy, not overly sweet, and super easy to whip up in one blender. I should know, I just made 9 batches of them lol. Oh, and they happen to be vegan, gluten free, nut free, and contain a bunch of protein from the undetectable black beans in them!

A little while a go, a friend from the university my husband works at asked me to bake the vegan/gf dessert option for the end-of-year party. I was quite hesitant at first because 1) I’m not a professional baker 2) I enjoy doing it on a small scale for friends but wasn’t sure I loved the idea of doing it large scale, but I eventually said yes because…why not. I’m super happy she casually mentioned I should just do these brownies as she was eating them one night. I probably would have spent hours searching for the perfect recipe, when it was staring me in the face the whole time. It comes together in about 10 minutes, and then if you’re insane like me making 100 of them, you can make the next back while the first one is baking. I love how, other than melting the coconut oil, I could make these entirely in the blender itself. I was a little worried about my blender getting all hot and bothered, but it kept its cool and survived the day. Thanks Ninja! I used this peppermint extract and topped them with Yupik’s (they literally have everything lol) crushed peppermint. (I once spent a ridiculous amount of time driving to literally every grocery store in town trying to find candy canes to crush for these. The search was unsuccessful and I eventually bought this bag of pre crushed ones from Yupik to save myself from this search again later.) They are a little fragile coming out of the tray, so be careful, but so fudgy and delicious!

Luthier

Luthier is so cool! When we saw the theme, the mechanisms, and the art on kickstarter I knew we were all in. Since we are both trained musicians (violin, voice, and piano for me, trombone, trumpet, guitar, and voice for him), and music enthusiasts, this was a no brainer. It is a fantastic worker placement game with a unique turn order system. One at a time, you put out your workers (chips) with different values face down. Then you go in turn order, choosing one of your actions to do and everyone who chose that action does it, with the person who put the highest strength chip down going first. This is facinating (and at times frustrating), and you find yourself begging your friends to please please please not do that action yet because I need to do this other action first. Thankfully, I play with kind and gracious people who usually give in to my sad pleas lol. You are putting these chips down to do things like: build instruments, repair instruments, get new instruments, perform, and ultimately make your patrons happy. When you do these things, you might even get to become first chair of your section of the orchestra! (those who can’t do, pretend to do in a game lol). It’s really thematic and has some amazing historical research put into it. There’s even a soundtrack!😍 We most recently played this, while eating those brownies, with our friend the orchestra conductor and chair of the music department at our local university. He was really digging all the composers and instruments and told us all about them in between turns. Beware that it’s a long, thinky kinda game, but if that’s you and your group’s jam, I HIGHLY recommend it. 10/10! 🎶🎼🎻

Want to buy these games? Check out your friendly local game store (FLGS), Amazon [here], or get a first-order discount at Board Game bliss [here].